Long back story but the salient facts are....
DH and ex -W split when kids were 4 and 2 and had share custody 50/50. His ex refused to allow him to see them - breaching court orders all the time. Claimed the kids didn't want to see him when he had it on good authority from other family members they did. When he tried to force it, made allegations against him. Totally false. All this is true as I've seen all the case notes, documentation, judgements and correspondence with his solicitor - before the "he's only saying that" brigade trot out the usual lines.
Got to the point where his own solicitor advised him to walk away for his own safety and sanity. He paid his maintenance (£1500+ every month) regularly, on time and never missed a payment. She frequently caused trouble under the old system as she thought she should get more because I'm the higher earner and she couldn't reconcile our lifestyle with her "paltry" maintenance. Ironically, if he was able to see his kids, we'd have given them all they wanted and more with no argument.
DH was no saint when married to her and I understand why she was bitter.
Roll on 14 years.
Daughter turned 18, tried to make contact - was threatened by his mother that she was homeless if she continued. Dropped contact. Later events highlighted why.
A year later, we got wind that Daughter was working and had left school. After asking CMS to investigate in June this year, we found out that in Feb, she said she'd left college in the spring but was enrolling on another course. After a long investigation, it turned out she'd actually left college in July last year so had a years over payment of maintenance for her (not including the child benefit that the government are going to have to get back from ex-w). During this investigation, she just refused to answer any correspondence from the CMS. This was adjusted in his maintenance payments going forward for his other daughter. We wanted to cease payments until the overpayment was used up but the CMS was not allowing that since "the child can't be expected to live without no money" - which completely ignores the mother had received it all up front. Note, we are reasonably sure the children didn't see much of the maintenance beyond what they needed as her lifestyle was not commensurate with how they lived. i.e. the relatively high maintenance payments basically paid for her weekends at the races, city breaks etc
When we asked for proof that child benefit was still being received for youngest daughter. Turned out she'd left college back in May! Again, no correspondence or anything.
End result is, she owes us in the region of £9500 in overpayments she should never have got.
The only option is to take the mother to court to get the money back - which I think is a major flaw in the system. If DH didn't pay, they would garnish his wages. But they have no power to make her repay the money she owes.
So the options are:
- Take her to court for the money. This would give some satisfaction of getting the money back, making her face DH and making her squirm. This is what DH favours.
- Be the bigger man and walk away. Its money we thought we had to pay anyway and we don't "need" it. My view is that if he has any hope of a relationship in the future with his daughters, he should just walk away and not give his ex any more ammunition to use against him other than the bile she has probably filled them with already.
I understand why he wants to do (1) and that is what I'd probably want to do - I just don't want him making things worse as I know the one thing he wants more than anything is a relationship with his kids.