Question about divorce settlement

[horridhenley]

I'm hoping someone with some experience of this might be able to offer me some advice.

My question relates to a historic divorce settlement. It was put in place in the mid eighties. The couple had been separated for a few years and shared one child who at the time was a teenager.

There were various arrangements put in place regarding the house and child maintenance that were all honoured.

A monthly fee was put in place of circa £50 a month to be paid by the husband until the wife remarried.

The wife has never remarried. The husband has. They are all now pensioners in their mid 70s. They don't see each other but both have a good relationship with their child (now mid 50s).

The husband feels that as he's retired he should no longer pay the £50 monthly payment.

Is this reasonable? He thinks the court would never have intended for the payment to continue so long. But is that really the case? Is the cancellation of the payment likely to be agreed by the courts, if it gets to that point?

Grateful for any insight anyone can provide.

Speak to a solicitor

Does anyone have any knowledge of this kind of thing?

Surely it depends on the agreement at the time of divorce?

I know one couple in a similar situation where the agreement was that he paid for life. Others might be worded to end at retirement.

Agreement at the time was until she remarried or there is a further court order.

You've answered your own question there then OP. He needs to get a further court order to stop paying.

Or option 2 - they just agree between them that he stops payment.

Or option 3 - he stops paying and his ex wife either does nothing or takes him to court, in which case he can argue his side of the case.

If the court didn’t intend for it to be paid for so long, they would not have agreed it.

It may have been agreed as a way of balancing him building up how pension whilst hers suffered from childcare responsibilities - a typical situation. In which case, it would certainly be intended to continue.

He can go back to court and ask them to reassess if his circumstances have changed and he is in hardship. If he can afford it and just doesn’t fancy paying - he shouldn’t have made that agreement in the first place.