Reduced Child Maintenance

[Intothesunshine]

Best give some background:

I have had a good job and decent pay for many years. When married was classed as main breadwinner although my ex wife worked in a local school as a fulltime TA.

We have a DS who is now 15.

We divorced in 2021 so dear son was 11.

Divorce was messy and financial settlement used my pension pots as capital versus value of house and ex wife's income, outcome was that I had to sign over the house to her in full, a painful experience.

I also agreed £750 a month child maintenance for our dear son, plus £15 a week pocket money paid into DS's bank.

Last year I became severely ill and had to take 5 months sick leave, some paid and some unpaid. I maintained the £750 child maintenance payments throughout my sick leave, however in the final month I could only afford £300. When trying to discuss this via text messages my ex became quite rude and obnoxious.

In the final few weeks of my sick leave my Dr said there was no way I could return to work in the same capacity and suggested I apply for Ill Heath Retirement.

I completed the application process and to summarise the story the pension provider agreed to Ill Health Retirement.

My pension is now a 1/4 of what I used to earn and therefore I tried to explain this to my ex wife and my offer of £250 a month. That went down like a lead balloon. My response was for her to approach the Child Maintenance Service at DWP.
She has now done so and the calculations are being checked.

I know it's a huge drop in payments but at age 64 I really didn't forsee having to take Ill health retirement.

Am I being unreasonable???

No you aren’t being unreasonable.

you’re income is your income, and if you need to take medical retirement what does she expect you to do?

Not being unreasonable. You're not choosing to stop working or reduce your salary to avoid paying. You're unwell and this day was going to come eventually. You can't work where you were before and need to reduce payments accordingly. It's unfortunate and can't imagine she's thrilled as she also won't have planned for it but that's life. She'll have to cope. You can't pay her what you don't have.

You're not unreasonable - you can't pay what you don't have. Hopefully the calculations will demonstrate that fact to her - if she's unreasonable then it sometimes helps to have an impartial third party give an evidence-based verdict.

No YANBU but at 15 I think it would be fair of you to discuss with your son the change in circumstances so if your ex has to make some cut backs he understands the reason why. Teens are v v expensive to run so if you can help with additional costs like tech when required, school trips etc.

Teens are expensive but you can't help being ill. Better 250 and an alive and well father for ds than working to an early grave. Ds may get a little part time job at 16 for his own fund spends.
Your ex may need to consider what she's going to do when the cms stops altogether. Can ds stay at yours more if he wants to? May help reduce the food bill at mums etc. Have you ran the figures through cms to see if 250 is what they'd suggest?

Whilst you aren’t being unreasonable in principle (you can’t help being unwell), I do have to wonder what your long term plan was. Presumably you didn’t anticipate divorce, and you chose to have a child quite late in in life, knowing that you would need to support and pay for this child well past the expected retirement age of 65. Without knowing what your job was, it’s hard to tell if it would have been reasonable for you to assume you would still be working full time at 70-75 years old (allowing time for your son to go to uni).

At what age will your full pension kick in? Or is this it, in which case, how did you expect to continue on a quarter of your previous salary?

Children are expensive, and whilst you can’t help your change in circumstances, you absolutely should have thought about your retirement plans and contingencies years ago, even at the point your ex wife fell pregnant would have been better than this.

You may have to do what many pensioners have to do when they find their pension isn’t enough - get a job to top up their wage. It’s not unreasonable to request a reduction in how much you are paying, but maybe you could offer to have your son live with you more to allow your ex to reduce all the additional costs of having a teenager at home.

If you’re no longer working, and if your DS isn’t averse, you could have him stay 50/50 with you so you and ex are both sharing the costs and no one has to pay the other.

There was an interesting comment by a woman lawyer who pointed out that there are significant risks with maintenance and that woman who get it need to take into account that the payer can die, remarry etc or in your case fall ill

Instead you ex wife got greedy and never considered what might happen especially given your age

Can you have your son over more? Make it more like a 50/50 arrangement.

What did cms say? Is the 250 what they have calculated?

The idea that any husband/partner would think of this scenario when they are 49 is a bit of a stretch. 49 is not particularly geriatric in terms of a father

the mother is able to and has been able to upskill for years and if she is younger then she has a long time of still earning.

no one can possible condemn a 64 year old who has been signed off

i wonder what the ex’s plan was? You only talk about o/p supporting the child, she has a responsibility to do so as well.

presumably she knew his age when they had the child. She’s likely a lot younger than him if he was nearly 50 when the child was conceived.

if they’d stayed together he’d still be retiring in 2 or 3 years. She’s got another 10 until retirement age. She knew there’d be a point while the child was still a teen when the income would drop.

if the boy is 15 she only has 3 years until he’s 18 and then she gets nothing, what’s the plan then?

has she spent the last 3 years working toward being more financially independent? £750 a month is a decent amount, if she’s retained all the equity in the house she could have her mortgage all but paid off.

both of them should have had a plan. The ex more so as medical retirement is unpredictable, but o/p’s age and the fact she should have been expecting a drop in income in the next couple of years and planned for it, that’s on her.

See that's the thing though...CMS stops at 18..how many 18 year olds are financially independent? How many still use their parental home as their base .uni terms are only thirty weeks in total. Yes of course the mum in this case needs to support and contribute but how come the NRP gets to just stop at 18? I know in theory the RP could kick them out, cut them off but that doesn't really happen does it.

Yanbu. You can't give your ex money that you quite literally do not have.
Ill health retirement isn't something that is granted easily, you can't help being unfit for work. Your ex could look at this as an opportunity for herself. She could do anything, say yes to new opportunities (ones that may involve travel for courses/ work when she perhaps couldn't have before) and this will improve her own earnings. She wouldn't need to plan around how she'll manage a career/ work trips away with a 15 year old- you're fully available now you don't work. This would be the most sensible thing for her to do anyway, in 3 years your dc will be 18.

Well no.

but it’s more usual once the child is 19 to give them the money directly if they are still in education.

Mum will need to be paying her own bills and her share of the expected parental contribution to the child. Dad pays his own bills and his share of the parental contribution to the child. The child gets loans to cover the rest of his expenses, like everyone else.

Sounds reasonable to me. The maintenance calculator will work it out anyway based on what you earn.

Well yes. I imagine that op didn't expect to be divorced. Or retired due to ill health. Or living where he is now, rather than in a mortgage free home. The unexpected happens and the only people who can prepare for every eventuality are those who are very, very wealthy.

I’m not condemning him for that - I’m asking how he expected to be supporting his family when he fathered a child at 49, fully expecting to be supporting them til around 70. I would ask the same of a woman who suddenly finds herself on a pension that’s a quarter of her previous income but still has children to support and all of life’s usual expenses. Anyone know a very well paid job, as described by the OP, should have been MUCH better prepared for retirement, whenever it came. That was a choice, and a bad one. We aren’t talking about someone on minimum wage who couldn’t afford to pay into a pension pot.

seeing this from her side if she has a court ordered set amount that’s paid every month and then you haven’t communicated with her what’s been going with you and suddenly you reduce payments by hundreds of pounds per month with no warning its going to be a shock for anyone and no wonder she is p’d off

(I really don’t know why more older parents consider this when they decide to have kids at nearly 50! That they are going to need to support a child well into retirement age - it’s pretty selfish TBH)

all you can do is wait for the CMS re calc to see why it says or go back to court. Maybe actually try talking to the woman explaining what’s happening and why

He communicated with her by text so it’s not like he didn’t mention anything. He’s still making Payments, she’ll just have to deal with the fact it’s less money than she was used to.

Surely the long term plan would have been to keep working, earning, saving and building the pension pot.
Your post sounds patronising, op may well of though about all the things you mention however unfortunately people get sick which is unpredictable

Regardless of your circumstances the costs of raising, clothing and feeding a child don't magically disappear because you are unwell.

I'm not surprised your ex is pissed off if the money she was expecting to have this month to look after your child has suddenly not appeared.

Do you have any plans for the future, beyond she'll just have to make it work?

Did you miss the part where OP tried explaining the situation to his ex via text?

He says he communicated with her by text but at what point was this…..the month he decided to drop from £750 to £250 or in the months leading up to this ….🤔

what’s the point in a text the week the payment is due when she is expecting x amount and suddenly gets y

i stand by my post completely unless the OP comes back and says he’s given her several months notice of impending change to payments

How did you communicate this op?

Was it a case of, “really sorry but I’ve had to stop working due to my health so my direct debit will have to drop. The CMS calculator says £250 is reasonable but I’m happy to pay £X for a few months and gradually reduce it down”.
Or was it, “I’ve had to stop work so from now on the maintenance will be £250”.

On the face of it no you aren’t unreasonable as you have had a massive drop in income but I do also have some sympathy for her as £500 a month is a big drop.

What were the timescales for you telling her that you were going to be dropping the payments so significantly? Did you give her a weeks warning or a couple of months? She may well have committed to things based on your payments, and now have to find the money elsewhere.

If you weren't divorced you wouldn't just be able to stop paying to feed and clothe your child. These things still need to happen- what do you expect her to do?

£250 doesn't go far each month clothing, feeding, educating and housing a teenage boy. Beyond anything else he might want for hobbies and things.

Your situation is unfortunate. But you really have left your ex in the shit here. I'm not surprised she is pissed off.