Maintenance and mortgage help

[whymewhyme]

Hi,
my EXH have seprated ( posted before) hes currently paying all the mortgage till end of july and I will then pay my half.

Does anybody know how this works regarding CMS?

I rang them (1.5hrs on hold)
Thay said that if he pays towards the mortgage it effects how much maintance i will recive

Has anybody got life experinace and would share there sutuation with me so i know what I'm looking at going forward.

Thanks.

In England, getting money from fathers very much depends on their good will.

he doesnt have to pay the mortgage at all. He could just stop. He could just stop paying a penny for anything and theres more he could do to stay that way than you could do to make him pay something.

Really? I didn't realise that.

I don't know how these men can just up and leave all their finical responsibilities

You need to speak with a solicitor.

If he stops paying the mortgage it affects his share/amount received when financials are settled.

Ask for the CMS amount and you pay the mortgage from that.

By not separately contributing to the mortgage he will lose out longer term. Get your house valued now. If the mortgage is defaulted on that affects his credit rating too.

If you can't afford to stay then you need to look at your other options asap.

Also, if he's self employed be aware that he can fiddle things to pay himself through dividends so that on paper it looks like he's on minimum wage. It can leave him paying virtually nothing and still earning a fortune. However nice he says he's going to be now, work on the basis that he will change that position. Push hard to get the finances finalised. I've not had a penny for my two in 2.5yrs and I would never have believed it possible of him. But he is.

Have you had any legal advice? You are in a very vulnerable situation here. He can just stop paying both and there is little recourse. Coming from the person owed £20k arrears in child support.

Are you able to secure the family home. Buy him out. Or downsize.

It maybe at some point he wants to purchase his own property and needs to be off the joint mortgage. What are your plans long term. Will you be in a better position in 5/10 years to buy him out.

You need to see a solicitor.

Without all the numbers for everything it's impossible for us to help.

Is he living elsewhere? Because it might be that he can't afford to pay all the costs for where he is living now, plus half the mortgage, plus your maintenance payment.

Ordinarily a decision would be made on the potential sale of the family home depending on your joint income/assets.

If it goes in to just your name, then yes, you would be paying it out of your own income.

You need to see a solicitor, you need to both disclose your earnings, then work out what's fair, and who needs what.

As others say your ex (are you still married or divorced), will need to house and himself and live etc,
if he sensible he will still pay half the mortgage as the martial home will be a joint asset (assuming you both own), and at some he will probably want his share of the asset either by you buying him out or selling up and splitting the residue

@RandomMess I don’t mean to threadjack, but what if someone stops paying the mortgage even before the split? What if it has been being paid out of one person’s salary for a long time? (because the other person either can’t or won’t contribute?). Does that effect how much the non payer can get out of the house after a split, or does it only start to effect things post separation?

Whilst you are together and married who pays is usually irrelevant unless a very short marriage and no DC I suspect.

Marriage = legally joint assets.

Because it's not his sole responsibility to provide a roof over the childrens (and yours heads) - not many people can afford to pay the mortgage on the family home (and therefore presumably facilitate the other parent to either not work at all or work part time) and also pay for a home of equal standards for themselves

If you are happy with the arrangement and it’s a fair amount paying half the mortgage, you may be better off. He is flexible regarding child costs, is he contributing towards these as well. You will only know if you will be better off if you make a claim.

It all depends on the arrangements with the house/mortgage? Why is he paying all of it currently, and why will he be paying half after July? What have you agreed to what will happen to the house - him coming off the mortgage and title? He could be paying the mortgage on your behalf, or he could be expecting to retain/release his share of equity in the house. Unless you have that very firmly agreed then it all has the potential to get messy.

If he's contributing towards the mortgage on your behalf, in lieu of giving you child maintenance, then that would reduce his liability for paying directly to you. But it's muddy water - in my experience CMS expects all maintenance to be paid directly to the resident parent, ex can't just say "I've paid for x,y,z as a form of maintenance. And I can see why CMS stipulate this, because it can become very messy to untangle otherwise, so I'm surprised they told you different.

Hi, my ex pays the mortgage and he went through a 'variation' with cms that takes into account prior debts. The way it works is, if the mortgage is say £400 a month, a year would be £400 x 12 = £4800. Then they look at his gross salary. Say that is £40,000. They subtract the £4800 from the £40,000 so the figure they would calculate the cms payments on would be £35,200.
In my case it took around £20 a week off the cms payment that was calculated before the variation.

My ex was court ordered to pay the mortgage until I retrain, at that point the house is signed over to me in exchange for me not touching his pension. Other options were we pay half of the mortgage each and then when youngest child is 18 we sell and split the equity 50/50 and I also take 50% of pension. Or the judge offered if we sold the house now I could take 70% equity and 65% pension. These are based on our situation, obviously yours will be different. I took legal advice from several solicitors then decided to represent myself.