Mortgage & School Fees Payments

Hi,

I am currently going through a custody battle with my ex wife with a final hearing pending. CAFCASS are firmly on my side and have recommended that I have residency of our children. However, until the final hearing the judge granted her access to our family home at weekends with me having to move out as she has moved out of the area. The house is on the market with a potential purchaser lined up but by no means certain.

However, since that happened my ex wife has now refused to pay her 50% of the school fees and mortgage totalling around £1400 per month in a blatant attempt to force me into financial ruin so I can't continue proceedings. She earns twice as much as I do and is already cohabiting with a new partner. She claimed in court, lying I might add, that the school fees had been paid upfront for the term - these are in fact paid monthly by direct debit as she well knows. The court were not interested in the lack of mortgage payments. We are no into the second month of me having to pay everything and I've now run out of money. The building society said to contact them when the payment was due and they'd take whatever I could give them but could not directly pursue my ex at this stage and that we'd be jointly liable for any debts. Just to rub it in she went out and bought herself a brand new car, probably 20K plus, at the weekend.

Is there anything I can do to force her into making some payments as this whole situation is getting ridiculous. I have asked my solicitor but she couldn't really offer much advice and thought we should wait until the divorce hearings.

Would appreciate any help or advice.

Hi, I have a similar situation. Wife left me with mortgage and stacks of credit card bills. My solicitor advised we should go for maintenance pending suit (MPS). I believe this means that we have to fill in a form (E1) which is a list of all income and expenditure (it's quite lengthy and in depth).

Once that happens the Court will look at how much matrimonial debt you have and can "force" someone to pay an amount into the bank until final hearing when everything gets reconciled.

I did have a sort of stroke of luck though, my ex brought me before a judge on a non molestation request. The Judge suggested that rather than going to court, we simply take out undertakings not to contact each other. I explained that one of the reasons I need to speak to her was because of finances - the Judge cut across this very quickly and got my wife to take out a separate undertaking to put a fixed amount of cash into the bank by a specific day.

All well and good (except the money isn't quite enough).

What you may want to talk to your solicitor about is MPS - BUT you should know that it would probably take at least three months just to get to a hearing so the sooner you start the better.

Hope that helps.

Mike

Sorry to hear about your wife playing silly games. One immediate step you could take would be to take a mortgage payment holiday of up to 6 months which would allow you to get back on your feet. You need to contact your lender asap to do this.

Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback, I've got an appointment with my solicitor next week to try and sort something out and have discussed the possibility of a mortgage holiday with the building society but am very annoyed they won't do something directly with her!

Dont know how youve done as from this post, but I hope youve come out of it ok ,I was in the situation of problems with mortgage... not as such mortage I could only just pay that but it meant having no food or facilities and unable to pay council tax. My reply on asking the mortage people for help was met with immediate threats of reposession, debt collecters, credt rating and staff who couldnt give a plop so I had to stop the first of my payments and reduce the next 3 by £220 a month for 3 months, they slapped me with a court repossestion order with out notice, I complaind that no notice was given they stated read my contract, mmmmm small print, so if its with cant mention the name but its a midland company with the intials BM, if your dealing with them then they are £$%$£$%$ plop. Months later i got my charges back off them via the martin lewis tips site