Advised By Solicitor to stop paying maintenance. Should I??

Emotional blackmail. And you're the sucker.

Do as the solicitor says, stop paying and she'll soon see sense.

I'd request a statement showing the mortgage is up to date as this is an important asset of yours.

Remember, she gets children's allowance and single parent tax allowance, so she's benefiting very nicely here.

This Situations always very emotive OP but without pre judging the current arrangement is clearly unsustainable.

I have to say I'm quite surprised any solicitor would advise you to stop paying maintenance albeit perhaps they meant stop subsidising the ex girlfriend exorbitant expenditure.

You clearly have an obligation to your child and you need proper advice on a reasonable but sustainable maintenance payment for your child urgently.

The Mortgage payment is the responsibility of both of you also (assuming its a joint mortgage), I see no justifyable reason the ex is not paying her fair share or at least contributing. This is a joint asset and at a minimum you should be recording all your contributions / payments towards it. This is important more for the long term if and when house ever sold.

Moving back in is easy to say but impractical.

Bottom line is seeking proper family law, legal advice on what your obligations are financially, it may require a family court determination but clearly this current situation is not sustainable. I would strongly recommend you prepare a full financial statement on all and any personal expenditure relating to this situation prior to getting legal advice.

Do not stop paying "Child Maintenance", that's a big no no but absolutely stop subsidising the outrageous expenditure that is clearly going on.

I wish you well

I have a little bit of experience of this scenario. You are getting absolutely shafted here buddy. You need to wipe the romantic fog from your eyes.

You need to go to court and get this mess sorted out.

In this scenario, legally you are required to pay maintenance for your child until it is either 18 or 21 (full time education) and that's it, full stop. No mortgage, no nothing else... and from anecdotes typical child maintenance is somewhere around €100 per week. If you do that, she has to provide you with visitation (and guardianship, I think)

If you are not living in the house, you should not be paying anything towards the house, sell your interest in the house (to her, if she can afford it, otherwise sell the house and split the money).

You are being emotionally black mailed here. I would imagine she has got legal advice and was told to steer things away from court and try to wrangle whatever she could off you by "negotiation"...as it would be the better deal for her.

I see where your solicitor is coming from but I would be hesitant to stop payments altogether. Did you ask why they suggested this apart from forcing your ex to chase you. Ask them how would it look in court if you stop. I think it's a stick the ex can beat you with. Make sure it's not cash you give her. Document it all.

And, if you click with and trust your solicitor, go with all their advice and delete this thread.

Best of luck dude and I hope you have a good relationship with the child as the years go by.

Re: the last line - that sounds very much like emotional manipulation to me. What gets me is when you said she told you she had already spent over €500 on shopping for her and your son this month. First of all, I have no idea how anyone could spend that much on shopping in the space of three weeks for two people. Secondly, the maintenance you're paying her is supposed to be for your son, not for your son AND her. I understand of course there will be overlap there when it comes to food shopping, but there is no way in hell anyone could realistically have spent all of that money on food shopping alone. Thirdly, your maintenance alone shouldn't be what's used to feed and clothe your son, she also has to put in her fair share too.

Do you know if she spends a lot of the money on unnecessary things for your son, such as extra toys and clothes he may not need as of yet? (I'm assuming he is young, which is why I mentioned toys. If he's old enough to have grown out of playing with toys then just replace that example with video games or another hobby he has).

Why don't you bring her to court?

To establish access to the child, mortgage payments, and a regular maintenance payment etc .

Perhaps the situation you are currently is in a bit "ad-Hoc" where one week/month she suggests she may need more money than the last.

Having a court order establishing a regular payment could do a world of good for your mental health, along with access to your offspring, establishing a relationship and so on.

If a solicitor cost 200, 300 or 400. Would it not be worth it? It may save you 000s in the long run and there is no price to put on piece of mind.

I'm not so sure here if you are completely correct there.

Would I be right in thinking that you are saying a man cannot begin court proceedings?

Surely I, as a man, have a right to walk into the court clerks office and request a family court hearing involving me -father of party y and party x - mother of party y.

So, are you saying that as a man, I would have no right to plead with the court to move from a stressfull ad-hoc situation of visiting rights one week, none the next. "I need €60 for the thing for the child" this week and "I had to but xxxx and I need €95 this week?"

Are you really saying that as a man, I would have to endure that degrading behaviour while stressing over what financial demand will come next week? Will I get to see my child this week? And that i can only explain my situation to a judge when Party X decides she wants to go to court?

Did I understand you correctly?

Also, the OP did mention that the solicitor advised him to continue paying the mortgage but to stop paying the ad-hoc 'maintenance' payments

Thank you for your reply and on it make some sort of sense, however, I just happened across this website which is written in nicely accomodating language and it looks like the essential message of the above post is contradicted somehow.

Also I found this:

Might I add here, just in case, that if the above website is an advertisement for a firm, please forgive me, I found this as I searched for "Non-custodial parent Ireland". I am not affiliated with this website (just in case it is a complex ad)

I understand what you are saying. That's where I pointed out about mentioning a topic to be discussed at a future date.

I'm not saying a party in court will stand up and say "...And another thing your honour..." - "Now, for my final point..." I haven't been saying that.

What I find incredible, and I'll go again. Is that a 'father' - according to posters on here - cannot approach the court and establish a routined structured system of maintenance payments. Where he will pay the maintenance to the District Court office and they will forward it to the 'mother' . Thereby avoiding scenes like "I need €100 this week" and so on.

According to posters here, the 'father' has to stop payments and be summoned to court, in his endeavour to provide for his child.

I can't believe it. I really can't.

Thank you. Can you help me understand it better then. Where am I going wrong?

I haven't once mentioned how court proceeding SHOULD go nor that it should go my way.

Again,

I simply cannot believe that a man cannot initiate maintenance proceedings - as has been pointed out here in previous posts.

By all means if my understanding is incorrect, correct me, I'm not making declarations. I keep repeating what - in my understanding - I've been told. That the 'father' cannot ask the court to establish a routine payment for himself.

Perhaps, if someone would like to point out why this is rather than simply tell me that I'm incorrect. How about that?

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

Ok. So what you should do is fill out the form on courts.ie or on the Treoir website requesting that you want to set an amount of maintenance that you pay every week/month.

Loueze, I thank you for your contributions and you made valid points, however, in post 21, in reply to my suggestion to the OP to initiate court proceedings himself, this is what you said:

"The only way for this to get before the courts, if for the mother to make an application for maintenance against the OP.

That is why the solicitor is advising the OP to stop paying. To force his ex's hand and getting the arrangement formalised. (Which I agree is better for all concerned)."

All I have been saying since that post (#21) is, I cannot believe this can be true. That's all I've been saying, apart from mentioning something to the judge, which everyone agrees is not standard procedure. I accept that and I probably should have worded my posts better in that regard.

@[Deleted User] Just on the point that the mother needs to make the maintenance application.. she doesn’t. He can make it himself/first.

Really?

A man is out there trying to do his best for his children. He faces varying demands for money each week/month. He is stressed to the hilt as he doesn't know what type of bill for the child will have to be paid this week.

He wants structure. He consults a solictor.

His solicitor advises him to stop payments

Then this comes through the door?

It would go against every moral fibre in my body to do such a thing (stop payments) , but I listened to the solicitor.

It would make me retch to open a registered letter that contains a summons to court and to read those underlined words.

This is the way it's handled is it? Automatically the 'father' is assumed to be wrong? The 'father' is answering a charge at the court?

Does anyone understand what I have been saying all along?

This cannot be true.

EDIT: This is a reply to Post #45

No, I cannot believe it.

If a man wants the use the court to establish regular payments that he is at the mercy of the 'mother'?

Like, lets say for example, the 'mother' and 'father' agreed a weekly payment of €H, then every now and again he gets a request for extra money, be it €20 for shoes on week. €60 for books the next. and so on and on.

He approaches his former partner and explains that he only earns €Q and €H is a substantial amount, I think you are taking advantage of me/ spending way too much/ we can't afford this - whatever reason.

"No", says the 'mother', "I'm not"

"OK", says the 'father', "I'm going to apply to the district court and we can establish a regular payment because at the moment I'm stressed out as I don't know what you are going to ask for each week/month."

"No you are not" says the 'mother', "I have all the power here, I am the only person who can make maintenance applications - you are not allowed make an application, Loueze on Boards said it, so it must be true."

I cannot believe it.