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Divorce/Child Contact/Mortgage

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  • Divorce/Child Contact/Mortgage

    This is a bit of a long one I'm afraid. I will try and condense as much as possible.

    Married my ex-husband in 2005 just after we moved an hour away from where we used to live. He had a child from a previous relationship, born in 2000 who he stopped seeing because we moved an hour away and he couldn't be bothered.

    Son born in 2008 - both names on birth certificate as we were married.

    In late 2009 we moved out of our mortgaged home into a larger, rented property because we needed more room and our house was in negative equity so renting it out was easier than selling.

    Late 2009/early 2010 he started acting strangely - found out since he was having multiple affairs, some internet, some real. Eventually I moved out of the big house into a smaller rented property as our mortgaged house was occupied. When vacant, he moved back into the mortgaged house then in November 2010 decided he was moving to Devon to live with some girl he met on the internet.

    In November 2011 I moved back into the mortgaged house with my partner. However, my ex-husband had not kept up payments on the mortgaged property when he had been living there, despite me paying it since he left and paying it on my own. I must note here he was self-employed. We had a business together which he ran away from and set up again in Devon.

    He sent me an email when he left for Devon saying he never wanted to see our son, then 2 again. That I could "tell him anything" apart from that he had died. He said he didn't want anything to do with the house or our child and that was the last we saw of him. We heard on the grapevine that he had split up with the latest girl in Devon and had moved back in with his parents in his hometown.

    After a while he contacted me again to say that this girl was pregnant and due in July 2011 so he had decided to make a go of things with her.

    In the meantime myself and my partner had to go to court over the mortgage because he had let it get into £3000 of arrears and they took it to a suspended possession order.

    He then took me to court over contact of our son. Until this point he hadn't paid a penny in child support. We hadn't heard from him at all.

    It took months to go through the courts - because he had a history of mental illness and violence, he was at first granted supervised contact at a contact centre. This then moved to supervised contact in a public place and more recently unsupervised contact in my local area.

    My questions are:

    1. My son has, for the last two contact sessions, refused to go with my ex-husband. He has only seen him for a few hours in total since he was 2, so has no idea who he is or why he has to see him every two weeks. He absolutely HATES going with him. He cries for hours beforehand, is extremely upset about having to go with him and comes home upset and miserable. Where do I stand with regards to the contact order? Can they force him to go? I'm making him available for contact at the time agreed, but short of putting him in his car and strapping him in myself, when he is in such a state, there is nothing I can do. No amount of talking him into it works. He told me the last two times he has been on contact with him, the first time he took him to an elderly man's house he has been trying to sell an adjustable bed to since we were together. He said he was bored and sad, there was dog poo all over the floor and he had to sit in a chair and not move. The second time he took him to his mate's house where again he was bored and sad. He is using his contact sessions with his son to see his own friends/potential customers when the courts said because he hasn't seen him for over two years the time should be used as bonding time for the two of them. My son has never seen any of his family since he was 4 weeks old. I'm dreading him wanting to take him away.

    2. He makes a CSA payment of £96 a month. He has lied about his income and when we were running the business earned approximately £3000 a week, give or take. I recently said to him that seeing he is back in his son's life, he can start showing support and asked him to buy a school jumper for him. He has never bought him anything apart from a small Christmas present in 2012. No cards, presents for birthdays, Easter eggs, nothing. He refused to buy the jumper because he cannot afford it. How can I prove his income to the CSA?

    3. He refuses to make any contribution to the mortgage which he is half liable for, despite me being disabled and a student, and needing to keep a roof over his child's head. The mortgage company are not interested. Is there any way of enforcing this?

    4. He has finally signed my divorce papers after nearly three years of waiting. When the divorce goes through, what will happen to the house? It is our home and I absolutely cannot afford to buy him out. The house is in arrears again as I have missed the last two mortgage payments. It is in very negative equity. Can they kick us out when we get divorced or force sale? I really do not want to leave, but I'm not wasting thousands catching up with the arrears if the house is going to be taken from me anyway.


    He has left me in massive amounts of debt, abandoned two children and is now on his third, has messed me around with court, the divorce and keeps sending bailiffs to my house for HIS debts. I'm utterly fed up of him and I cannot wait for the day when I am finally free of his crap.
    He's aggressive, violent, a tax-dodger and a money-grabber. He owns an adjustable bed company and preys on the elderly and vulnerable.

    Please help!

    Thanks
    Tags: None

  • #2
    Re: Divorce/Child Contact/Mortgage

    Originally posted by CharlotteJ View Post
    This is a bit of a long one I'm afraid. I will try and condense as much as possible.

    Married my ex-husband in 2005 just after we moved an hour away from where we used to live. He had a child from a previous relationship, born in 2000 who he stopped seeing because we moved an hour away and he couldn't be bothered.

    Son born in 2008 - both names on birth certificate as we were married.

    In late 2009 we moved out of our mortgaged home into a larger, rented property because we needed more room and our house was in negative equity so renting it out was easier than selling.

    Late 2009/early 2010 he started acting strangely - found out since he was having multiple affairs, some internet, some real. Eventually I moved out of the big house into a smaller rented property as our mortgaged house was occupied. When vacant, he moved back into the mortgaged house then in November 2010 decided he was moving to Devon to live with some girl he met on the internet.

    In November 2011 I moved back into the mortgaged house with my partner. However, my ex-husband had not kept up payments on the mortgaged property when he had been living there, despite me paying it since he left and paying it on my own. I must note here he was self-employed. We had a business together which he ran away from and set up again in Devon.

    He sent me an email when he left for Devon saying he never wanted to see our son, then 2 again. That I could "tell him anything" apart from that he had died. He said he didn't want anything to do with the house or our child and that was the last we saw of him. We heard on the grapevine that he had split up with the latest girl in Devon and had moved back in with his parents in his hometown.

    After a while he contacted me again to say that this girl was pregnant and due in July 2011 so he had decided to make a go of things with her.

    In the meantime myself and my partner had to go to court over the mortgage because he had let it get into £3000 of arrears and they took it to a suspended possession order.

    He then took me to court over contact of our son. Until this point he hadn't paid a penny in child support. We hadn't heard from him at all.

    It took months to go through the courts - because he had a history of mental illness and violence, he was at first granted supervised contact at a contact centre. This then moved to supervised contact in a public place and more recently unsupervised contact in my local area.

    My questions are:

    1. My son has, for the last two contact sessions, refused to go with my ex-husband. He has only seen him for a few hours in total since he was 2, so has no idea who he is or why he has to see him every two weeks. He absolutely HATES going with him. He cries for hours beforehand, is extremely upset about having to go with him and comes home upset and miserable. Where do I stand with regards to the contact order? Can they force him to go? I'm making him available for contact at the time agreed, but short of putting him in his car and strapping him in myself, when he is in such a state, there is nothing I can do. No amount of talking him into it works. He told me the last two times he has been on contact with him, the first time he took him to an elderly man's house he has been trying to sell an adjustable bed to since we were together. He said he was bored and sad, there was dog poo all over the floor and he had to sit in a chair and not move. The second time he took him to his mate's house where again he was bored and sad. He is using his contact sessions with his son to see his own friends/potential customers when the courts said because he hasn't seen him for over two years the time should be used as bonding time for the two of them. My son has never seen any of his family since he was 4 weeks old. I'm dreading him wanting to take him away.
    How old is the child? The courts will normally look at what is in the best interests of the child and if the contact is court ordered then you have no right to stop using them. You may need to seek to vary the order again so that it is done in a contact centre due to this issue.
    2. He makes a CSA payment of £96 a month. He has lied about his income and when we were running the business earned approximately £3000 a week, give or take. I recently said to him that seeing he is back in his son's life, he can start showing support and asked him to buy a school jumper for him. He has never bought him anything apart from a small Christmas present in 2012. No cards, presents for birthdays, Easter eggs, nothing. He refused to buy the jumper because he cannot afford it. How can I prove his income to the CSA?
    I think you are going onto muddy waters here because there are issues with contact. Maintenance for a child and contact with a child should be completely seperate and i think in regards to presents given, the child will be able to make his feelings absolutely clear to his father in the course of time. I appreciate that you feel as though he has made your son's life bad and that as can be seen below the issue of the house but sometimes you need to let that last issue go. If you try and hurt the father of your child then it will not turn out as you want it to.
    3. He refuses to make any contribution to the mortgage which he is half liable for, despite me being disabled and a student, and needing to keep a roof over his child's head. The mortgage company are not interested. Is there any way of enforcing this?

    4. He has finally signed my divorce papers after nearly three years of waiting. When the divorce goes through, what will happen to the house? It is our home and I absolutely cannot afford to buy him out. The house is in arrears again as I have missed the last two mortgage payments. It is in very negative equity. Can they kick us out when we get divorced or force sale? I really do not want to leave, but I'm not wasting thousands catching up with the arrears if the house is going to be taken from me anyway
    If the house is in arrears then the bank can do something about. Issues relating to finance should be part of the divorce proceedings.

    He has left me in massive amounts of debt, abandoned two children and is now on his third, has messed me around with court, the divorce and keeps sending bailiffs to my house for HIS debts. I'm utterly fed up of him and I cannot wait for the day when I am finally free of his crap.
    He's aggressive, violent, a tax-dodger and a money-grabber. He owns an adjustable bed company and preys on the elderly and vulnerable.

    Please help!

    Thanks
    When bailiffs are sent round to your house then state to them that he has moved out of the family home and that they can have his new address and provide the details you have.
    Please do not use the child as a weapon either. People who are simply leeches in society will generally get what is coming to them without need of your help.

    If he is a tax dodger then HMRC annonymous tip line. If he owns a company then he will be registered with companies house and he should be filing accounts on a yearly basis.
    "Family means that no one gets forgotten or left behind"
    (quote from David Ogden Stiers)

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Divorce/Child Contact/Mortgage

      Oh my you are going through it arn't you, and he sounds a right charmer

      Question 1, I'd get in touch with the court or whoever granted him visiting rights, explain what your little boy has told you and ask that contact be restricted to a contact centre only.

      Re the mortgage I'm sorry I can't help, but someone will help I'm sure.

      Re his debts, are the debts in his name only ? if so have you written to all the debtors and told them that he hasn't resided there since xxx ?

      Whatever you do please don't panic, you will get through this.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Divorce/Child Contact/Mortgage

        Thanks both - I'm not going to break the contact order but they in my case have not looked at the interests of the child at all. They have looked solely into the interests of the ex-husband. That isn't me being bitter - that is the truth. My son is the second child he has abandoned then decided he wants to walk back into his life years later. My child is extremely unhappy with seeing him and they do not care about that, only that my ex sees him for his own personal gain. He has told me he's only doing it to spite me.

        I've done the HMRC thing. He's unfortunately not Limited.

        Some of the debts are in his name - I've sent those people to his new address. Some are in joint names like the mortgage. Some are debts that he took out in my name because he had poor credit. A mobile phone, a car, utilities.

        Thanks Sapphy

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Divorce/Child Contact/Mortgage

          Isn't there someone from the court or whatever who can chat to the little one informally and find out his feelings and whats going on, I'm sure that I've read somewhere on here that it can be done, if I were you I'd really push to make sure he only has supervised access.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Divorce/Child Contact/Mortgage

            Originally posted by CharlotteJ View Post
            Thanks both - I'm not going to break the contact order but they in my case have not looked at the interests of the child at all. They have looked solely into the interests of the ex-husband
            I'm afraid I do not agree with you. The interests of the child is to have contact with both parents. Personally, I agree with you in terms of the quality of the contact but to deny a child any contact with their father is not a good idea unless the man is violent and uses violence against the child.

            That isn't me being bitter - that is the truth. My son is the second child he has abandoned then decided he wants to walk back into his life years later. My child is extremely unhappy with seeing him and they do not care about that, only that my ex sees him for his own personal gain. He has told me he's only doing it to spite me.
            You need to speak to the Guardian at litigem if the case went to court because ceasing contact makes you look as though you are using the child against the father.
            I've done the HMRC thing. He's unfortunately not Limited.

            Some of the debts are in his name - I've sent those people to his new address. Some are in joint names like the mortgage. Some are debts that he took out in my name because he had poor credit. A mobile phone, a car, utilities.

            Thanks Sapphy
            See above. Unfortunately, whilst I disagree with a lot of what CAFCASS do(they usually act as Guardian ad ltigem, ceasing contact when it is court ordered is a complete no no. If you fail to adhere that advice then I'm sorry, but I will not help when he takes you to court for failure to adhere to a court order.
            "Family means that no one gets forgotten or left behind"
            (quote from David Ogden Stiers)

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Divorce/Child Contact/Mortgage

              Originally posted by Sapphire View Post
              Isn't there someone from the court or whatever who can chat to the little one informally and find out his feelings and whats going on, I'm sure that I've read somewhere on here that it can be done, if I were you I'd really push to make sure he only has supervised access.
              There should have been a Guardian ad litigem usually CAFCASS person who seeks out the wishes and feelings of the child. Unfortunately I am not a fan of them but their recommendations are usually followed by the courts in most cases. If a CAFCASS guardian was appointed at the last contact hearing then they need to be contacted again in regards to the incidents mentioned above.
              "Family means that no one gets forgotten or left behind"
              (quote from David Ogden Stiers)

              Comment

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