Hi.
I am paying £750 a month to my ex wife as maintenance for my 18 year old son, under an agreed order. The order runs until he finishes Uni, or 2026, which ever is the sooner. The problem is, he goes to Uni in a few weeks and my ex wife has only committed to giving him less than £200 a month. So she is pocketing around £550 a month for herself, which does not seem fair. And my son will come and expect me to make up any shortfalls in his funding.
Does anyone have any advice, or similar experiences? What would the courts say if i stopped paying her and just funded him directly?
Hi,
I have no experience of this but think it would be bad idea to stop paying her. If son asks you for more money, you could explain how much you are paying to support him.
I assume this is a court order for maintenance. I'm not sure whether you would succeed, but you could try opening a case with CMS - CMS orders override court orders for maintenance that are more than 12 months old. If you do succeed, then the CMS order would stop once he goes to university.
Another option would be to go back to court to see if you can have the order varied so that you pay your son directly.
I think you should not stop paying child support to your ex-wife without a court order. This could result in fines, jail time, or both.
You can file a motion with the court to modify the child support order (explain that your son is going to college and that your ex-wife is not providing him with adequate financial support...).
If the court modifies the child support order, you can then pay the child support directly to your son. However, the court may not modify the child support order if it finds that your ex-wife has a legitimate reason for not providing more financial support to your son.