Mortgage and maintenance

Our house is in my name, but most of the time my ex resides there with our kids. I have them every other fortnight when I move into the house and my wife moves out.

Keeping the mortgage going is a real struggle. Does the fact I pay the mortgage in any way effect the amount of child maintenance I am liable to pay?

Well, let's perhaps look at it this way. You own the house, you pay the mortgage, the kids live there, so by paying the mortgage and allowing the kids to live there, you are, in effect, providing for them.

The central issue, I think, is what happens to the house.

May I assume you are divorcing ? If so, the Court will be concerned to ensure there is a home for the children. But it is important that there is a home for you too ; and it is clear that running two homes is putting your budget under great pressure.
But the problem is that you have a statutory obligation to pay child support. Now if, for argument's sake, your wife had the right to live at the FMH for some time to come - perhaps till the children have grown up - then she will normally be expected to pay the running costs out of what resources she has or might acquire. These might include maintenance ( child and spousal ) her wages, if any, benefits like tax credits, child benefit, council tax benefit and so on.

I can't really get any ' feel ' as to whether that could be reasonable, but I suspect that, as long as you keep on paying the mortgage, and she lives there, she may well be doing rather well - at your expense. She may have very little incentive to disturb the status quo.

In theory you have an obligation to pay child support : I suspect no obligation to pay her maintenance ; but as sole owner you have an obligation to pay the mortgage. It may be an option for you to discuss this with the lender and see if they can help.
May I ask whether you think your wife might be willing to discuss this issue ? You will have to pay child support, you may have to pay spousal on top of that, and if your wife can't manage then it is unrealistic to expect you to pay rent and a mortgage while she pays nothing.
LMM

This is quite an unusual arrangement, you must have a reasonably good relationship with your ex for it to work.

I agree with LittleMrMike that there are quite a few considerations about the house but if you're both happy for the moment with this arrangement could you discuss together how you can make it work?

Your positive co parenting approach would be really supported by a mediator if you felt you needed help to have this discussion. The mediator would get you to compare your incomes (do you know what benefits your ex receives?) and your expenditures to check who's feeling the pinch. Chances are you both are but this info could be the basis of decisions going forward. You could also discuss the longer term decisions about the house.

In summary, depending on your respective financial situations you could have a case to reduce your financial contribution. Handle this sensitively tho if you don't want to jeopardise those w/e's in the house!

Hi guys

The fact is we didn't have a good relationship but things have got better recently due to me coming out of something dark I've been in the past 15 years! I've been so bitter for so long which I now think was the result of depression and which led to me acquiring a gambling addiction. Basically I was a **** and I hope I no longer am.

We split up because of my gambling. I had remortgaged the house upto 80% of it's worth, had loans and credit card and family debts and then lost my job (unrelated to gambling). The first couple of months I lived in log cabin we had at the bottom of the garden and then moved out to my sisters after we had been to mediation on the understanding we currently have.

For the first few months I kept paying all the household bills and the mortgage...but it was really my sister keeping us going. I now receive mortgage protection which is my only income along with jobseekers. That keeps the mortgage going but not much more. It doesn't allow me to get another job which means I'm a bit trapped... I did try to sell the house and let my wife have the equity, but the cash offer we got was not enough for her. Without her consent I could not sell the house.

The MPP will go for another 15 months or so, but such is what it pays that I have no chance of getting a job paying anywhere near the nett amount. I still make minimum payments to a loan and two credit cards I have (no interest being charged on them) and some bills like the phones, water and TV licence on the house. I still survive with the help of my sister.

I am now faced with a large tax bill. One way or another I think it's inevitable we will lose the house. I wish I had gone bankrupt last summer but my mindset was not good then. But I'm thinking that if the inland Revenue make me bankrupt it may not be the worse thing that can happen to me. For a start I'm told that they would only consider half the equity of the house to be my assets, allowing my wife to have the other half. And the time it would take for all this to go through might allow my wife and kids more time in the house.

In the meantime I was thinking of reducing the mortgage to interest only and my payments to the loans and credit cards to a £1. That way I was thinking that the MPP (which would stay as it is) would allow me to pay back my sister and make a contribution to the house. I'm not sure what benefits my wife gets but if I did start making a contribution in this way, would it affect what she now gets and would their be an insistence on me paying a certain amount of it in maintenace?