ex wishes to go abroard - help!

Hello. My ex and i were together for five years when we seperated for a number of reasons. At the time of seperation i was pregnant with our daughter who is now 10 months old. We were not married, but co-habited for a short while.

After our daughter was born we had a few issues but these were eventually resolved amicably without geting lawyers involved. He has now returned to university to do an MA in London while i am employed part-time as a primary school teacher in Cumbria. As result of his MA his child mantience payments do not begin to cover half the cost of bringing up our daughter. Our 'agreement' involves him paying money monthly (however small) and making more of a conscious effort with visiation to A so that he is more consistent. In return for this i agree not to go to the CSA or court and enforce payments.

Anyway, he has been offered a position in the USA indefinately on completion of his masters. While this is a well paid position i have several qualms. Firstly, i do not know if legally he can be forced to pay when living in another country? Although he has been good with payments so far, i cannot guarantee that this will not change in future. Secondly, at present i am managing to foot the cost of bringing up A alone with my salery. While i would welcome not being constantly poor i feel that this violates our agreement for him to be more consistent with access to our daughter. I feel that his presence in her life in the long term is more valuble than money which we are presently managing without. Clearly, he is not going to be spending time with her if he goes to the USA indefinately. If push comes to shove, can i stop him from going if our agreement is not strictly legal?

Help!

I don't think you can stop him going. Theoretically he should maintain his child until she finishes fulltime education, but not sure how easy that would be to enforce if he decided not to.

The contact is another issue. Sadly many fathers lose touch with their children after divorce - some through no fault of their own and others because they don't/can't make the effort.

Your daughter is too young to miss her father yet. I suppose he could keep in touch with webcams, emails etc when she is bigger, but that isn't anything you have much control over either.

hi arebell,
if he does go to the usa, at least he does not want to take your daughter with him, this is exactly what my wife is trying to do,
and believe me when you realise it is a possibilty, i cant begin to describe the pain you feel, so have comfort in this that you have your daughter safe with you.
pete.

Thanks. Unfortunately for me at least if he wanted to take her with him i would know he was at least considering maintining some kind of relationship with her. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side...

Even long distance a child can grow up knowing and seeing a parent. As far as maintenance is concerned when one parent lives abroad the courts have jurisdiction not the Child Support Agency. Whether child maintenance is imposed by the court or agreed by 'consent' it is documented as a legally binding order. Then if necessary there are international agreements for the reciprocal enforcement of maintenance orders.