[SKnuts]

Thanks for replying. For the children’s matters I am a litigant in person.

Thank you for your advice – as you’ve said, I have since found out that I would only need permission via order if I needed to vary the child arrangements order. Since this will not be affected and no variation is needed, I can move house if I want and have been told it is one of my human rights to live where I choose.

[SKnuts]

Hi, thanks for replying! I could potentially just commute to the school, but the main issue is that our daughter will be starting secondary school in 2 years and I want her to have established friendships to move into secondary school with.

Also, my ex was a solicitor and was struck off for stealing a considerable amount of money. This was in the local press and still is and local parents at the school know who he is. He also has a reputation for being a psycho, and a couple of parents have told their children they are not allowed play dates at our house in case he is there. He has not been allowed within 500 metres of our house for many years but I can understand why other parents are wary. Needless to say the children have lost friends as a result. I would rather the children be away from this association and  we all have a fresh start.

 

[SKnuts]

Sadly he can! I have given up with CMS and am just in shock at how inadequate the system is. They seem to be so concerned with being ‘fair’ to the non-resident parent at the detriment of the other and therefore the children.

I recently discovered that my ex was claiming £3000 a year in ’special expenses’ (he sees children for 2 hours every 3 weeks!) despite CMS having all the court orders and details of contact. Nobody looked at this and thought this was strange. The CMS just take people’s word – they can’t have asked for evidence because there was none! He had inputted this amount on his assessment and was taken at his word.

When I found out I applied for a variation but had to produce all the evidence of contact costs myself, I.e. obtained all the costings and dates from contact provider. The total costs came to under £300. CMS said they have powers to use forensic financial  investigators but I don’t think they utilise this.

In the end I received notice that my variation was accepted and his payments were to increase. A week later I received another letter of the same saying his payments would be even lower and this change was final! All he did was go off and find another way to evade it and despite what CMS say, they just accept whatever claims the paying parent makes. I was never allowed to know the reason why his payments were lowered again so cannot challenge it. This is shocking because my ex has a documented history of fraud and findings made against him in other courts and tribunals of fraud. I provided evidence of this but still they believed what he said! He could claim for travel to and from contact (60 mile round trip) but I was never entitled to do this. It is very unfair.

There will be forums like this full of non resident parents looking for loopholes, particularly for controlling and abusive ex partners. It is a form of financial abuse and an inability to prioritise needs of children over desire to abuse you.

All I can suggest is to gather as much evidence that you can that his travel is for work purposes and send it to CMS, and keep messaging them/ calling them about this over and over.

The other thing is that CMS get their figures re income from HMRC. I think HMRC may take more notice of things like tax fraud if he is under reporting income etc. HOwever, there is a tolerance for underreporting – you can under report your income by 25% and CMS don’t vary the payments! When I saw details of his claimed income, I saw he had diligently worked out how much to report with the is threshold in mind. Shocking the effort some will go to just to deprive their children.

 

[SKnuts]

Been in this situation for the last 5 years too. My ex never paid anything towards any of the mortgage/ building insurance/ leasehold etc. I want to sell and move. I have had a lot of legal advice so here is a summary:

1. Entirely dependent on whether you were married or not;

2. Presuming you were not married (like me), you will need to make a TOLATA application:

3. Course of action is dependent on whether your property is registered as tenants in common or joint tenants (you need to check the deeds if you have your conveyancing file from purchase or with land registery);

4. Tenants in common is by default 50-50 split – legally you each own a 50 per cent share regardless of who pays what;

5. You can issue a claim under TOLATA to have your share adjusted to reflect detrimental reliance (I.e. to reflect your contributions but note that you can only claim capital payments from mortgage, not the interest you have paid) but this is very difficult and very costly. The court do look at conduct so if your ex is unreasonable and refuses to accept a reasonable offer then he can be ordered to pay your legal costs (typically the loser will pay winner’s costs);

6. The court will impute intentions, I.e. the intentions of you both when you bought the house, whether it was intended as a family home – if you (even informally) agreed that one person may end up paying  the mortgage on their own but still only have a 50 per cent share then you will be held to that. That totally sucks if you are the one left paying!

7. If the children live with you full time, you can make an application under schedule 1 of children’s act for a lump sump for housing the children (you may have to give him this back once your children are both 16 though);

N.b. The court does not have the power to simply order one party to remove themself from deeds. This is done in an order for sale which will stipulate who receives what share of the equity (either percentage or lump sum) upon completion.

Your ex would also be liable to pay a share of the selling fees. It is worth reading up on some of the tolata case law where under certain circumstances some tenants in common have successfully claimed more than 50 percent. The advice I’ve had is basically it depends on all the evidence you have that you have contributed and he hasn’t. Also, I’ve been told it is very costly. It can cost you £30,000 in legal fees so calculate whether it is worth it!

Good luck!

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