Child Maintenance or Spousal Maintenance

[DADKiwi]

Hello,

My consent order has the following wording regarding payments to my ex-wife.

The respondent undertakes to continue to providing the applicant with ongoing financial support for the benefit of Child 1 and Child 2 until each child finishes secondary education or turns 18, whichever is later at the rate of £287.50 per child payable on the 1st of each month to the applicant and to be reviewed on 1 January each year thereafter RPI index linked.

In the event that the respondents gross annual salary decreases by more than 10% the parties agree that a revised calculation would be made.

To me this strongly reads to be Child Maintenance and not Spousal Maintenance. The values above were reached using the CMS calculator.

I have the children 50% of the time so would not pay child maintenance.

Do other consent orders explicitly use the term Spousal Maintenance or Child Maintenance?

Yes there is a court order for the children also

Okay, this is less than ideal. You appear to have a nominal spousal maintenance order with an extendable term (no Section 28 bar). It means she can both apply for spousal maintenance at any time and also apply to extend the term before (but not after) the expiry. In theory she could re-apply to the court and get substantive spousal maintenance and apply to get it for longer than the order. In practice she is unlikely to be successful, but the possibility is still there.

If you reduce the child maintenance (and in answer to your original question, yes the first clause is child maintenance), there is a possibility that she will seek substantive spousal maintenance. That said, if she is on benefits it might not be worth the legal fees to get the difference in SM as it would reduce her benefits and the legal fees would probably be more than ten years of SM!

The bigger risk for you is when your youngest is about to turn 18. She might decide then that actually she rather likes getting the money and wants it in SM. If she's allowed to work part time until then, she might be able to tell some whoppers about how she's been unable to work full time. It might be worth aggravating her to bring things to a head, force her to maximise her earning capacity and getting the section 28 bar on the SM.