26 Feb 2015

A question about : Child maintenance payments

Hi!

My fianc!e has 3 daughters. She divorced in 2003 and the county court order specified that he had to pay Ј125 per month per child until they were either 17 of finished in tertiary education, whichever was the latter. Oddly there was no provision for inflation.

He has paid this regularly for over ten years, including paying at the Ј375 rate even after her eldest finished university two years ago. This money has genuinely been spent on her children.

However, he has now stopped paying and says he won't pay any more. This is probably because she is now marrying me, although I doubt that that would have any impact on his responsibility to the court order.

Her inclination is to go back to the court, and ask them to do whatever they can to enforce the court order, and to ask them to consider inflationary increases. However, my question is, as he has effectively (voluntarily) overpaid because her eldest finished university 2 or 3 years ago, would the court take that into consideration, even though it was voluntary on his part at the time?

She is reluctant to start to get into a lot of legal expense, and her ex is a slippery self-employed sort who would doubtless convince the court that he has no money.

Anyone got any experience of this kind of thing?

Thanks

Alan

Best answers:

  • Tertiary education is considered A Level's as far as child support is concerned (secondary being up to and including GCSE's) so as long as the youngest is still at A-Levels or lower then he should still be paying something.
    Is it worth it? Self employed probably not.
  • She could open a CSA case. As long as the court order is more than a year old I'm fairly sure she can go to CSA. Any previous overpayments by him would be irrelevant.
  • Thanks for the help! I hadn't even considered tertiary education to be anything other than an undergraduate degree, but having Googled it now it appears that there seems to be little consensus.
    The following link from Pannone suggests that tertiary is a degree, but I've found other sites suggesting the opposite. She's going to write to the court and see what they say.
    https://www.pannone.com/media-centre/...ld-maintenance
    Many thanks!
    Alan
  • You dont say how old the youngest qualifying child is. Only the courts can make an award that includes university education. The CSA cant force payment beyond the end of child benefit (which is normally the end of 6th form but can now also be the equivalent level up to the age of 20, so nvqs etc).
    If the existing court award stated tertiary then its probably only enforceable if the child actually attends school or college to A level or equivalent. BUT you do need to confirm what the original court order stated.
    You need to think of the above and decide which route is likely to give the most positive outcome. Just a couple of notes though. The CSA (or whatever they are called now) can access HMRC records so him being self employed shoudnt be an issue providing he is 'Self Employed' ie, fills in a self assessment form and isnt working via a limited company. Also the courts cant overturn a CSA decision so it may actually be in his best interests to voluntarily go to the CSA before you make issues for him through the courts.
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