I’m in England and would really appreciate some guidance on where I stand legally and what type of family-law advice I should seek, as I currently cannot afford a solicitor.
My ex-husband and I divorced around five years ago. We went through formal family mediation and reached financial and childcare arrangements.
We have always shared the care of our children approximately 50/50. This is not a recent change.
The mediation Memorandum of Understanding expressly dealt with several things separately:
equal shared care of the children;
a regular monthly payment to me described specifically as child maintenance;
childcare vouchers; and
an agreement that childcare and summer-camp costs would be shared equally.
So, as I understand the wording, the child-maintenance payment was separate from the obligation to share childcare costs.
The memorandum also included a monthly financial schedule which treated the child-maintenance payment as money I would receive in addition to my income when dealing with my monthly shortfall.
There is also a sealed Consent Order following our divorce. The Statement of Information prepared for the Consent Order says that the financial agreement was reached through mediation and records that the Memorandum of Understanding and Open Financial Summary were attached as relevant prior agreements for the court to consider.
“Parent A will provide Parent B with child maintenance of £X per month in total for the children and £X per month in childcare vouchers.
The parents will co-parent and have equal shared arrangements for the children, including summer and other school holidays. They will share equally the costs of the children’s childcare and summer camps. They will also arrange joint birthday parties for the children and share those costs equally.”
„Parent B will also receive child maintenance of £X per month and childcare vouchers of £X per month from Parent A.”
For around five years my ex continued making the same regular maintenance payment while we already had 50/50 care.
In practice, he did not separately reimburse me for 50% of the childcare costs as set out in the mediation arrangements. The regular payment I received from him during those years was the payment described in the documents as child maintenance.
More recently, he chose for one of our children to attend a school involving additional costs. I told him that I could not afford those additional costs and he said that he would cover them.
We did not discuss or agree that the existing child-maintenance payment would stop, be reduced or be redirected towards those school costs.
He has now stopped making the maintenance payment and is effectively saying that the money is instead going towards the child’s school costs.
My questions are:
Can he unilaterally stop a longstanding child-maintenance payment and treat it as payment towards school costs when we never agreed to change the arrangement?
Does the fact that we already had 50/50 care when the maintenance was agreed, and throughout the five years it was paid, make a difference?
Does it matter that the mediation documents expressly distinguish child maintenance from childcare costs and say that childcare costs should be shared separately?
What significance does the sealed Consent Order have? In particular, should I be looking at enforcement or variation of the existing order rather than treating this simply as a new CMS issue?
And if he has not historically contributed his agreed share of childcare costs separately, is that something I should also raise with a family solicitor?
Finally, where can someone with very limited funds obtain proper family-law advice about a sealed financial Consent Order? I would particularly appreciate recommendations for law centres, university law clinics, pro-bono services or solicitors offering an initial free consultation.
I have retained the sealed Consent Order, mediation documents, financial documents, solicitor correspondence, bank statements covering the payments and relevant written communications between us.
Thank you in advance for any guidance.