maintenance question

[Tallie11]

I was hoping you could possibly advise on post divorce maintenance.

My partner has been divorced for about 4 years. He has two children, who go to secondary school . We have them every weekend. Ex wife has been absolutely fine untill she found out that I'm due to have a baby in the middle of March and has threatened to take us to court to pay the full maintenance. Ex wife is motgage free and works fulltime. My partner and I are also in fulltime employment.

There has been a change of circumstances over the years, including my partner being unemployed,(we still continued to pay maintenance throughout) though he eventually found employment for much less money, and ex wife lived with someone, though he has since moved out. As a result of these changes his ex wife and my partner agreed to lower the maintenance, however this was agreed privately and not through a solicitor.

Ex wife decided last week to take us to court for to pay the full maintenance. Will the courts see this as reasonable ? I cannot believe she has decided to do this, one month and half before having a baby.
Would we have to pay backdate maintenance, as it was agreed privately by my partner and ex wife, and not by a solicitor.

I am so worried, as I honestly feel we are being truly fair.

Thankyou for reading this

is there anything in writing re agreement to reduce maintenance?
has she applied to enforce the arrears of (she says) unpaid maintenance?
your dp should consider making his own application for a downward variation of the original maintenance order.
your dp should consider getting some legal advice.
would be good idea for dp to write out full account of the history of all this.... dates / amounts etc. will need this info for any solicitor / for the court.

Who decided what the "full" maintenance should be? Was it agreed as part of the divorce proceedings?

Does your dp have any evidence relating to the agreement to lower the maintenance? How long ago did they agree it?

Perhaps your dp should pre-empt things by applying the vary the maintenance order as he is now on lower money and has another child on the way (in fact, by the time it all gets to court, the baby will be here).

I have lots of sympathy for you Tallie11, we paid maintenance to dh's xp every month and she swore that she would never go to the csa, fast track 4 years when our ds was a month old and we got a lovely phonecall from the csa, I really cannot believe she did that, & we will never know why, before csa we paid every month plus school uniforms, plus school shoes and trainers so it's not as though we never helped out.

I have never resented paying for the children, I just resent it going through the government, we have had no end of problems with them grrr.

I hope you get it sorted xx