Court costs

[skye33]

Anyone got any advice for me over being taken to court by my ex and costs I'll have to pay ? It's over me wanting to move 140 mile distance from where his house is as can't afford to buy anywhere near him and he not prepared to help me financially as we weren't married. He keeps telling me it ll cost us £20 000 to take it through the courts 😳 I agreed to mediation but that didn't work for us. Any advice please as very worried about being taken to court.

We have a 4 year old DD

Well you can represent yourself, so it doesn't have to cost you anything, if you're comfortable doing that.

How much contact does he have with your DD at the moment? What are your proposals for contact if you move? Presumably he is paying child maintenance? Just not anything above that? Why 140 miles? Is there nowhere nearby that you can afford?

This sounds tactical to me.

Married or not, they are his children and he has a legal (and moral) obligations re: maintenance.

This does not change because he doesn't like your new address, maintenance is NOT an optional payment.

If he wants to make an application to the court in respect of child care arrangements HE will have to pay to make the application.

As Fourormore said you could, if the worst happens, self represent IF an application is made.

There is no rule to say that you have to use a Solicitor. And there are lots of great organisations out there to help along the way.

I capitalised 'IF' because threatening to take someone to court and actually doing it are very different things.

Lots of people threaten to do it and when the reality, and costs kick in, change there minds.

The children are the priority, as they should be, not the proximity of where they live in relation to there dad.

As long as you have been reasonable in trying to sort things out re: access you should be ok.

Hope this helps

Yes thanks for advice. Think representing myself is probably route I'll go down. He will take me to court he isn't one for not carrying things through unfortunately.

I'm moving 140 miles away as my sister who I'm very close to and her family are there and willing to help with child care. He changed the locks week after I moved out to stay with my sister to look for somewhere to live so our family home clearly wasn't a family home just his house I was paying to live in.

I've applied to csa for maintenence they will contact him so hope he will have to pay although says he won't. That's good to know that he will have to pay for the application but think it's crazy to drag it through courts but he is convinced that I'll be made to move back to his town if we do. I'm hoping he wrong.

Very unlikely that you'll be made to move back if you've already gone.
How often is he getting to see her now? Has it gone down since you moved?

Very few circumstances where he'd get a nil assessment through the CMS. Even on benefits he has to pay £7 a week.

Locking you out of the family home a week after you moved out isn't going to help his case much. He sounds delightful.

I'm not sure that will be frowned up particularly, kittybiscuits, given that the OP and her ex weren't married so the OP presumably had no legal right to live there.

I'd be interested to know what legislation he will be relying on. I'm not sure that a law exists to make you live somewhere you can't actually pay for. How does he think that would work?
He's just trying to bully you, move where you want and let him waste his money on a groundless application. You can represent yourself if need be, but he's on a hiding to nothing.