What can you do if exhusband stops paying maintenance ordered by Court?

[dragofly]

I wondered if anyone knew how to enforce a court order for maintenance. My child's father was ordered to pay maintenance by a Court Order and has now stopped. He has stopped as the Court order said he should pay up until the date..

When the child attains the age of 17, leaves full time secondary education or another such order is made.

She has reached the age of 17 but is still in full time secondary education so I feel he should still be paying. I believe that there may be a form I can get from the court but am not sure. Does anyone know what this might be and what my chances are of succeeding? -The wording is a bit woolly but it was done through my solicitors back in 2001. I don't really want to go through the CSA as he did not pay when I tried through them years ago.

When an effective order was made in 2001 the CSA/CMS does't have the authority to take on the case anyway. Have you tried writing formally to your ex to to find out the reason payments have stopped and to try to resolve the dispute? If he has lost his job it may be a waste of time trying to enforce the order or he maybe mistakenly thinks the order has terminated.

Is that the wording of the order? Because that looks like he could argue that one of those criteria has been met (she's turned 17) and therefore the order has come to an end. It doesn't seem to say that he has to keep paying if she's 17 and in education.

Is she at sixth form? Would he argue this was actually tertiary education perhaps, since she could have left full time secondary at 16?

She is in sixth form doing A levels next year. I wrote to him saying she was still in education - he has had no contact with us for many years, and he has written to say he is seeking legal advice. He has been retired for several years now and has inherited money so his financial position is probably better now than it was previously. He is very antagonistic and would love to run up some legal bills for me if he could.

Usually orders are worded along the lines child maintenance ends when the child reaches 17 or leaves education, whichever is later. If it doesn't say that your ex may have a point, although when an order is no longer in effect the Child Maintenance Service can carry out a calculation and that might be more than the amount in the court order.