Do I "OWE" my ex?

CJC01

I have recently split from my partner of 4 years. We have a child together who is 2 1/2 years old and I have moved out of the family home.

Over our time together she claims I owe her £5000 for general things couple pay together such as rent, bills, car etc.

She is demanding this money back otherwise she will move back to Poland and take our son. We have joint custody so she cant in essence do this.

Whilst I understand her financial hardship since I have moved out and stopped paying for 90% of the household outgoings I don't think I "owe" her anything...

I checked with my bank and over a 3 year period she has received by cheque or bank transfer over £24,000 for "said" rent, bills, car etc.

Do I "owe" her this money or does she in fact "owe" me £9500? Your thoughts would be very welcome. By the way, I would never dream of asking her for anything.

newcook

Providing you are paying maintenance for your son you don’t owe her anything else – nor does she owe you

why would she owe you £9500? you were living together until recently and so would be contributing towards household costs.

daska

joint custody? I think you might be misunderstanding something. Assuming the child was born here, rather than Poland, if you're named on the birth certificate you will have parental responsibility, otherwise you will have needed to obtain this by agreement or court order. Do you have any court orders concerning contact and residency? If you don't have any of this you need to get legal advice asap. In fact, scratch that, if she's threatening to take the child out of the country you need proper legal advice - full stop.

adamantine

unless there is an order in place you only have parental responsibility not joint custody.

using a child to try to get money off each other is really ridiculous. if you truly think she will take off with him to poland apply for a prohibited steps order which means she cannot take him anywhere over 30 miles (i think not 100% sure of the distance) from where they currently live without your permission then apply for visitation through the courts and get it all in writing.

forget who "owes" who anything. you were a couple you have a child together. time to grow up.

**Patty**

Based solely on what you've posted........

If you've lived with & had a relationship with someone for 4 years, subsequently had a child & shared all normal family household costs & benefits......for which you've paid her £154 a week.

I think you should count yourself lucky.

Gigglepig

Have you asked your ex what specifically these 5k were meant to cover? Did she for example run up credit card debts or overdrafts due to paying rent etc while you were together, for which you did not give her half when you moved out?

If you had a child and or joint finances and were living together and/or married it seems reasonable that you would pool and split all savings and debts when you split up.

Playing the devil's advocate here, keep in mind she will probably be worse off than you anyway if she was off work on maternity leave while you were at work building a career and a pension pot...

Now that you have split up, if your exOH is short of money I can understand why she would need to relocate back to Poland which is cheaper (and she would also probably have a better network of family and friends to support her or perhaps help with childcare) - so it could very well be in the child's best interest to move back there.

Have you paid maintenance since you moved out?

curlytop12

Gigglepig wrote: »

Have you asked your ex what specifically these 5k were meant to cover? Did she for example run up credit card debts or overdrafts due to paying rent etc while you were together, for which you did not give her half when you moved out?

If you had a child and or joint finances and were living together and/or married it seems reasonable that you would pool and split all savings and debts when you split up.

Playing the devil's advocate here, keep in mind she will probably be worse off than you anyway if she was off work on maternity leave while you were at work building a career and a pension pot...

Now that you have split up, if your exOH is short of money I can understand why she would need to relocate back to Poland which is cheaper (and she would also probably have a better network of family and friends to support her or perhaps help with childcare) - so it could very well be in the child's best interest to move back there.

Have you paid maintenance since you moved out?

all of the above, and "joint custody" hasn't existed for a long time.
parental responsibility is what you need to ensure you have before she decides to leave the country.even if you do have it you may have to go to court to stop her leaving the country.

RAS

You need a bit more than parental responsibility.

You need a contact order and a prohibitions order in place to prevent her taking the child out of England and Wales assuming you live in one of them (Scotland and NI have different courts).

Bluemeanie_2

You cannot owe her anything, nor her you. When people choose to cohabit, without the benefit of marriage, unless you have specific agreements in place (i.e. you "borrowed" £5k for a car and agreed to pay her back) there is no laws or anything that can help you.

I would pay her the correct amount of maintenance for your son (Use CSA calculator or go to the board on here and someone will do the calculation or help).
I would then speak to a decent family law solicitor and apply for the above mentioned courts orders. Good luck, she should not be using your child as a weapon to get money.

Lotus-eater

It depends how much you trust her, but if she's effictively blackmailing you with your son, then she doesn't seem very trustworthy to me.

She might take the 5k and move anyway. She might be back in 3 months for another 5k.

I don't know how a prohibitions order works in practice, would they stop her if she tried to leave, could she effectively disappear in Poland and it would be prohibitively expensive or impossible to do anything about it?

Just some thoughts that crossed my mind.

BitterAndTwisted

Was she working during the entire time you were together? Did she earn more money than you and was supporting you for some or the whole time? If you're not paying her child-support you need to asap. Someone on their own with a small child to look after is probably not going to able to earn enough to live the same kind of life as they did as a two-person and two-wage household. Perhaps she's aggrieved that you left without giving her enough time to make arrangements to live on a much lower income?

Whatever the reason for her threats, there's no point in arguing about who owes what to whom as a household is a household and whatever was being paid for was presumably by mutual agreement. Raking over the coals will only bring stress and misery. Bad blood will only make the child's life more difficult rather than easier.

Compromise. Mutual agreement. A prohibition order.