[Solved] Up the creek without a paddle?

Thanks for sharing where you're at right now. It sounds very hard right now, I can't imagine how hard it must be to deal with all of the things you're facing.

Here's some questions that may help us give you some advice?Have you sorted out how often you see your daughter with your ex or have you gone through the courts? Have you come to any agreement on how the debt you/both of you owe is to be paid off?

Look forward to hearing back from you.

Springchicken

Hi and welcome,

your situation isn't uncommon unfortunatly, I know that's no help at this stage but it will hopefully be when others drop by to give advice from thier own experience.

I was in a similar possition to yourself, I was on the mortgage and had to pay money for my son also, my work life suffered greatly.

the up side is there are always answers and ways forward, as you don't currently have a solicitor the legal guys from here can help and i'm sure someone will drop by today and pass it accross to them and hopefully they can lend you a paddle.

the biggest piece of advice I would give is talk about what's going on with someone, you will be amazed at how much talking will ease how bad you feel, talk here or find a friend that will listen, and the second would be try not to get into a battle of wills, I know that bit is tough but the harder you push for sometyhing the harder your ex will probably push back. choose your battle carefully and priorities which are most important at this time, and try not to do everything at once if that's possible.

August wasn't that long ago so things between you both are still very raw, and I'm sure your feeling very alone and frustrated at the situation.

hopefully others will drop by soon,

but keep dropping by and chat here.

Darren

Hi champ

Reading through your post, my initial reaction was that there's a whole jumble of problems there, and I'm guessing that this pretty much reflects what's going through your mind at the moment. While that's perfectly understandable, I would say that having got this down in writing, what you need to be doing is to start to separate out the various issues and deal with them separately. As well as it being easier to give advice on, it will also start to help you feel like you are getting somewhere as each issue starts to be resolved, rather than you feeling like your are stuck in a mire and getting pulled in further.
We certainly have specialists on here who can give you free advice, apart from the dads on here, we have the Corams Children Legal Centre (CCLC) who can give you free legal advice, assuming you still don't have a solicitor, and the CCCS can give financial advice (and you definitely need to take advice before going down the bankruptcy route as this will have a major effect on you for a long time). There's also a link to the Child Maintenance Options website, where you can get information about child support.
If you can post separate questions about each, we can get the experts to pop on and answer your queries.

Above all, as above, keep checking back here and talking about it, and we'll do our best to help.

Hi champ,

Sorry to hear of your situation. In bears a striking resemblance to my case.

Your issues are four-fold:
- Contact with your Daughter
- Living Arrangements
- Responsibilities toward prior home
- Starting the Reasoning Process with your ex

For Advice on Contact, there is a thread sticky at the top of this forum. I would strongly advise that before taking the matter to Court you speak to your ex and state clearly and firmly that: "I want to set out a defined Contact arrangement for [YOUR DAUGHTER]". If she refuses to speak to you, becomes aggressive etc. then write her a letter to state that unless an agreement on contact is reached, Courts will become involved.

Note: if you are having financial difficulties you may be entitled to a full or partial re-imbursement of fee's.

Contact i assume is your first priority. Your ex seems to be dictating far too much and this is a story which Dads here can agree with and relate to.

Have you arranged with your Mum on you perhaps stopping with her until you manage to get on your feet?

For your Flat, if you are named on it, given you are not married, there may be some instances in the future that your ex could make a claim (sue you) for some of the costs towards this... and i'd imagine she's going to qualify for legal aid. As you no longer live there, you are not liable for Council Tax costs (unless there are arrears specifically relating to when you were there). Ensure you have contacted HMRC Tax Credits to let them know you are no longer living at the home, under their guidelines you are responsible for letting them know you no longer reside in the household... this could save you a lot of money. I owe close to £700 in repayments all because i wasn't aware of the above. Bills you are not responsible for.

To make it clear: Your responsibilities are for Maintenance toward your Daughter, Mortgage and any bills relating to insurance which your ex-partner is now paying on your behalf

To start the reasoning process with your ex, you do need to be very careful. Raising or the threat of raising an application to court could result in threats of stopping contact. If she appoints a Solicitor, they will usually always recommend that she witholds Contact from you in an attempt to get you to drop your case.

What sort of Contact are you getting at the moment?
Have you used the CM Options website and calculated 15% of your pay?
Ensure that no cash transactions take place.
Have you now started keeping a detailed diary of events?

Ok so I just wrote a massive reply and because it took so long it logged me out and I lost it all.

In reply to some of the questions. Currently my access is 0 as she has stopped it although tonight she is saying that I can pop round and see her at the flat under my ex's supervision tomorrow night after work but I am no longer allowed to have her over night.

We were in debt management plan through pay plan but that has now ceased on my part as my living costs have spiralled out of control which means that they can't work out a new plan for me, having to buy a new car to get to work hasn't helped the situation, as I work in a rural area the buses are not an option. If the flat sells for 12k less than we bought it for then that will be another 12k to add to our debt which I simply cannot afford to pay back while trying to support a household on my own.

I have used the Child maintenance calculator and that said that I should be paying my ex £88 a month due to me having our daughter 15 nights a month but because I knew she was struggling I have given her £200 a month and in the first month she took £400 out of our then joint account in total.

It is not me that's threatening court it is her, She threatened court and told me I can't have molly overnight any more all in one fell swoop because I told her that I was not going to pay the bills on the property. I do need to point out that I was made to stay at the flat while I had our daughter and I was not allowed to have her anywhere else however to say that I was living there is a complete joke. In fact at one point she came home and I said I was going to use the shower and she started going ballistic at me about it and told me to get out.

I do not claim tax credits at all, she phoned them and put everything in her name including the childcare but each month she still demands more than the £200 I give her to pay the excess to nursery. She wanted me to pay the rest that tax credits doesn't pay to her basically. Do I still need to phone them?

I may have missed some bits out but lets start there for now. I am exhausted as I'm not sleeping so I hope this makes sense and to be quite honest I just don't even know if I have the energy for all of this. I've joined the gym to try and get my energy and sleeping back in to some kind of balance (I had depression previously and the docs advised that this was a good idea) Not sure what else to do to sort myself out. I am sleeping on sofa's left right and centre and that is taking a toll on my health too.

I just need some direction I think but every piece of advice I can get is fantastic.

Hi champ,

If your ex has stopped access... that in almost every circumstance is wrong. The only person it will truly affect so negatively is your daughter.

Have you thought about raising a Contact Application to the Courts? Its relatively straight forward and i can say almost certainly that you will qualify for an exemption of the Court fee's.

Again: You are only responsible for: Child Maintenance, Mortgage, Insurances you are not responsible for bills.

For Tax Credits... did you give your ex your details? As in earnings details? If so, you will likely be part of the claim. Even missing a couple of months can have exponential costs as 100% of the money paid has to be paid back.

So the main questions are:
1) Do you have somewhere to take your Daughter when you would have her?
2) Would you be prepared to go through the Courts?