Separation with 3 children & a mortgage, help please.....

spiced

Hi, sorry if similar has already been asked...

My wife and i spearated in Nov 2011 for various reasons. We have 3 children and they live with her. The maisonette where they live is jointly owned with joint mortgage. She does not work and looks after the younger 2.

I moved out of the family home and been paying for child maintenence and the mortgage (570 each = 1140).

Some friends have said that i am paying too much in respect of mortgage aswell as CM. Is it right my ex can claim the interest of the mortgage to be paid by the housing benefit?

Reason only asking now is that i do not have enough money to start rebuilding my life and cant expect to stay with family rent free for much longer....

Thanks for reading my waffle, hope you can help!

Teeniepops

Seek advice on whether you qualify for legal aid as, with kids and complicated finances you will need legal support. If you do, they will be able to provide an idea of where you stand regarding the property and CM.

You may want to contact mediation company too - my boyfriend had to as part of his divorce before it progressed and they had no kids and short marriage. Google for local companies - the rates are shown. It helps provide means to chat between you and your wife to remove stress of court battles if you can agree things together.

Is she being helpful/cooperative? Money wise and access - remember this is essential to secure too as it isn't just about the money. You will (I assume) want to see them on a regular basis so this needs addressing.

If she is, you cold try to decide things amicably between you and remove much cost between you and, more importantly for sanity, stress and upset. That way, you can lower legal costs in having it formalised before it goes to court.

Good luck love

RAS

hi

You need to put what you know of the situation into https://www.turn2us.org.uk and find out how much mortgage support will be paid. They will opnly pay interest on the original mortgage (if you have taken equity out since, they do not cover that).

You are expected to pay 25% of your salary in CSA, no more.

The split in the property needs to be agreed as part of the divorce settlement.

Caz3121

Your wife will have around £270 per week in benefits (assuming IS, child benefit, child tax credits)

That together with your maintenance would be over £1,700 per month so she should have some spare cash (obviously don't know if she is currently servicing a lot of debt)

spiced

Thanks to all for your replies.

Am on fairly good terms with ex so after a chat she is calling benefits tomorrow to get the ball rolling. I am currently paying 25% of salary in CSA so just need to get the mortgage sorted, which it would appear part of it is covered as ex on income support.
I see my 3 girls every w/end and speak daily plus week visits so dont need to sort anything on that side of things just the joint mortgage payments.
Ex does have debt too not sure how much though.

Thanks again

Opinionated

Ring the mortgage company and let them know what situation is... I initially arranged for a payment holiday before moving onto interest only which enabled me to buy time to arrange who was going to pay what
You have to live too! Good luck

pulpfictionlover

Good to see a man paying child support and not complaining,But just to let u know if yr havin yr children every weekend yr child support should come down also u can offer to pay their school fees even travel this also will come of yr amount, good luck

Floxxie

Agree to pay the mortgage in place of the child maintenance.

I do not think that your ex will be able to claim mortgage interest through HB while your name is on the mortgage and there is no court order to say it is her property only.

My ex also paid the mortgage and maintenance until I read that there may be issues with claiming CTC and being seen as a single claim.

ACoz2000

Hi,

I also pay CM and the full Mortgage... I work in the Middle East and pay no taxes but declare exactly that as my monthly income so end up paying 1560 pounds plus 530 pounds mortgage a month! I have done this since separating two years ago without fail... I'm getting fed up with the ex dragging her feet over the divorce settlement and its time to get tighter I reckon. I didn't think of changing the mortgage to interest only! Good plan to start with...

Makes me sick the way women take advantage of us blokes who genuinely want to support the children but get taken for a ride! Time to fight back!

My worry was if I started to change the payments she may start messing about with access when I come home every 6 weeks, shes already messing me about anyway so it can't get any worse can it!