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Paying Mortgage and money direct to children

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John Frederic
Posted by
New Member

15 Feb 14 #422422 by John Frederic

Topic started by John Frederic

I have for the past 8 years paid the mortgage circa £400 and £160 per month to children. I live in my own apartment. The children live with their mother. This costed circa 25% of my net salary. The house is specially adapted for our disabled daughter who is now 18 years old and want to move out to become independent.

The reason I pay the mortgage and money to the children is that when my exwife wanted me to leave the family house she was drinking heavily around 1-2 bottles of wine per day. She was unstable mentally and smoked a lot. She also said to me that she was fed up looking after other people and was putting herself as number one. I did not trust her to give her any money, so I paid the mortgage and provided for the kids instead. My exwife has carers taking on most of the care for our daughter and she goings abroad for 4 days at a time around 6- 8 times per year.

She now is claiming that I owe her back dated maintenance.

Any views?

WYSPECIAL
Moderator

15 Feb 14 #422423 by WYSPECIAL

Reply from WYSPECIAL

Was there a court order in place to pay maintenance or did you just do it by mutual agreement?

mankster
Junior Member

15 Feb 14 #422476 by mankster

Reply from mankster

Hi my husband has had a similar thing happen where they came to a mutual agreement to pay £50 per week directly (nearly 50% more than he has to according to his wage) - we did this and she thought she would get more if the CSA collected and tried to backdate the pauments for 4 years, amounting to 10K which they demanded on the night that they contacted him!

Dream on.......

She finally agreed that he had been paying the £50 for the whole time and then completely closed the CSA account to continue directly (she found out she was only due to get £30 per week) and refused contact until she got the £50.

She then continued to refuse contact and had to contact the CSA again as my husband refused to pay (not his normal behaviour but he was fed up with being bribed for money every 5 minutes e.g. if you dont pay for half her bed you wont see her this weekend (ie the bed in her mothers house). The CSA were only able to backdate the payments from the day that the contacted the huband as she had to open a completely new case as the previous one was closed.

Moral of the story is that they can only backdate from the date that the case was opened

and, if anyone is interested, is only now entitled to £20 per week :/

Fiona
Platinum Member

16 Feb 14 #422529 by Fiona

Reply from Fiona

WYSPECiAL''s question is important.

When there is a court order settling finances on divorce stating one spouse is to pay the other periodic payments and make payments to a parent for the benefit of a child the terms are legally binding and any arrears can be enforced.

A Separation Agreement wouldn''t be legally binding but if there had been full financial disclosure, both parties had the benefit of legal advice and the agreement was "fair" ie complies with the law the agreement would carry considerable weight and the court could make an order to reflect the terms of the agreement.

On the other hand when there is an open case with the CSA/CMS the paying parent is liable to pay the receiving parent and the CSA collect arrears of child maintenance.

If there is no court order, separation agreement or CSA application and you have a voluntary agreement between yourselves the agreement carries no weight and payments can''t be backdated before an application is made to the courts or the CSA.

Child Maintenance Options
Moderator

21 Feb 14 #423289 by Child Maintenance Options

Reply from Child Maintenance Options

Hi John Frederic

Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will provide some information that may help answer your query.

If a new application was made to the statutory child maintenance service, they would only be able to enforce payments from around the point when the paying parent is contacted by the Child Maintenance Service. You can find further information on using the Child Maintenance Service on Gov.uk at www.gov.uk/child-maintenance.

Where child maintenance has been made via the courts (for example a Consent Order), once it has been authorised, the paying parent is legally liable to pay the amount the court has endorsed. However, the court does not monitor or collect payments. This means the receiving parent would need to seek legal advice for any missed or reduced payments, unless they are happy to accept them. For further guidance on the enforceability of a Consent Order or Minute of Agreement, you may wish to seek legal advice.

If child maintenance was agreed privately via a family-based arrangement, neither the court nor the statutory child maintenance service can backdate payments prior to a court or statutory agreement being made. You can find more information on family-based arrangement on our website at www.cmoptions.org/en/family/index.asp.

For more information on the ways to set up child maintenance, please visit our website at www.cmoptions.org. Alternatively, you can call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on a Saturday.

Regards

William

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Moderators: wikivorce team, rubytuesday, dukey, hadenoughnow, Tets, Forseti, Mitchum, WhiteRose, Lostboy67, WYSPECIAL, Bubblegum11

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