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Hi...
I wonder is someone could help me? My son will be 21 in August and he has just finished his degree at university. Whilst he was there, I had been paying my ex-wife 5% of my annual income as per the Court Order that I agreed to. This states...
...AND further, the Respondent Husband shall pay periodical payments to the Petitioner Wife at the rate of 5% of his net earned income from his 18th birthday until he finishes full time tertiary education including university or vocational training or the equivalent and including any gap years whichever occurs later or until further Order.
My son has now decided to continue his university education to MSc level and my ex-wife now wants my maintenance payments to continue. She works full time and my son is also earning a very good wage by working during the summer.
So, my question is, taking into account the above, do I have to continue paying maintenance to my ex wife?
If my son takes a gap year in Sep 2015 and then continues to PhD in Sep 2016, again, do the payments have to continue?
I thank you in advance for your inputs.
Gaz
Hi Gaz936
Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will provide some information that we hold on when child maintenance stops.
If you wanted to follow the statutory rules that are employed by the Child Maintenance Service, regular child maintenance payments must be made until a child is 16 years old, or 20 if they are in full-time, non-advanced education (A-level or equivalent), or for as long as Child Benefit is being paid. When a child leaves full-time education in the summer, Child Benefit generally continues until the first week of September. You can find more information on the statutory rules on when child maintenance will stop on Gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/when-child-maintenance-payments-stop.
However, you have mentioned that child maintenance was agreed and set up using the courts. With this in mind, you may wish to seek legal advice to gain clarification on whether ‘university education’ means bachelor, master or doctoral levels of education. If you do not have access to a solicitor, you may wish to contact the Citizens Advice Bureau as they can provide information on legal topics. The contact details for your local office can be found on their website at http://www.adviceguide.org.uk.
For more information on the ways to set up child maintenance, please visit our website at http://www.cmoptions.org. Alternatively, you can call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on a Saturday.
Regards
William
Hi William...
Many thanks for your reply to my post, very much appreciated.
It seems that I will have to seek legal advice as you have suggested.
Once again, many thanks...
Gary
Hi there
As far as I am aware a court order for maintenance can be overridden after it has been in place for 12 months by applying to the CSA, or CMS as it is now known, and asking them for a claim to be opened so that you can pay via their service. However as your son is 21 they would say that there is no liability to pay any longer... By their rules maintenance payments should have stopped when he started Uni.
As it is paying through the gap year is mentioned in the order I do think that seeking legal advice is the best course of action. It might be that you could go back to court to vary the order.
Hi Nannyjane...
Many thanks for the information, both yours and William's is just the sort of advice I needed.
I have written to my ex-wife explaining matters and I am now waiting to hear back from her.
I'll let you know how it all goes!
Thanks again...
Gary
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