Non payment of court order what next?

[FluffyCut]

Hello

Lovely people in this section have helped me before, under a different name, and helped me to register my court order for school fees with the magistrate's court, as my exh stopped paying it after about 3 months.

I have now done this and sent all the receipts etc off. The original court order was for half school fees plus associated costs, so i have sent receipts for the fees, after school (held at the school) holiday club (held at the school), uniform etc.

[I was never awarded child maintenance as my solicitor wanted me to be able to pursue exh through the csa. Unfortunately exh told me he wasnt working for 9 months so i didn't go to csa then i found out he was lying and working the whole time and csa can't back date - never mind!]

Anyway, does anyone know what happens next?

Does the magistrates court just ask him for the money?

If he says he can't pay, what will happen? Will i get awarded say £5 a week? He owes me over £4,000 and as i'm currently on maternity leave I really am struggling.

He has told me that he will say in court that an amount of money he gave me for something else was actually for the fees and therefore he won't have to pay

He has a full time job but he has threatened to leave it if i take him to court.

He is also a solicitor and will use any trick to get out of paying. He actually told me that i couldnt chase him for this money because it was done 12 months before, lovely ladies on here told me that was rubbish, the arrears had to be 12 months old (which they weren't) and they were right!

any help greatly appreciated, thank you.

oh and also since i registered the order another set of fees has come due, can i include those or only whatever amount i wrote when it originally transfered from county to magistrates?

and (sorry!) what happens to the court order now, does it just stay in force? dd will be at that school for the next 12 years hopefully. can he contest the original order?

sorry for the length im very stressed over all this, he often threatens me because of his 'legal knowledge'

Why cant dd go to a state school?

That may be the question which the Court asks.

thanks, that's really helpful Lucinda

Of course dd could go to a state school.

That's not the point, the point is my exh and I decided jointly to put her in a non state school/nursery 5 years ago and agreed to pay half the fees each. We have a court order to that effect. He has ignored the court order for a year now and not paid.

I assume the court will only vary the order if exh asks them to, as he has not done that so far he is over £4000 in arrears.

Would you have responded in this fashion if the court order had been for maintenance?? I think not.

Unless he applies to vary the order your ex is liable to pay the amount stipulated in the court order. Arrears are enforceable like any other debt and as long as a debtor is found to have the means to pay the court has the power to make a charging order, deductions from earnings, warrant sales or send them to prison.

However, your ex is partially correct. Arrears more than a year old cannot be enforced without leave of the court but leave is usually granted. He is on thin ice if he doesn't have evidence what the payments he made were for.

Threats to give up employment are not uncommon but very few people actually do give up their job once they have thought through properly the long term implications to salary, promotion prospects and pensions.

Thank you STIDW. I knew he was right on the arrears being over a year old bit, the kind ladies on here had told me that before last time I panicked He told me it was the court order itself that couldnt be a year old, hes a git.

Interesting that those threats are common but dont usually come to anything, thank you, hopefully i can stop panicking a bit.

Do you know if this will result in a ccj against him? just worried as hes a solicitor and i thought a court judgement might affect his ability to practice?

thanks again for your help, very appreciated.

Does anyone know if he'll still be able to practice as a solicitor if he has this judgement against him? Is it even a judgement? And are they likely to award £5 a week? I think he currently earns about £20k a year (he's not working as a solicitor at the moment).

Thank you

bump

A quick google led me here which implies it is Ok for practising solicitors to have a ccj (or be bankrupt!) but I can't imagine it would be favourably looked upon applying for jobs etc.

Let me just go ask DH (solicitor).

DH doesn't know, apparently work renews his practising certificate .

Further googling shows that it's harder to get your first practising certificate with CCJs, criminal record, etc, but once you've actually got it, you just renew it each year unless you've done something really spectacularly bad. And been caught.

thank you Heathen, much appreciated