Becoming a spousal maintenance cash cow - or not

[psychocandy]

I agree with the others. In your position I would stay perm, and get as much flexibility as you can from your current position. Use this to spend as much time with your child as possible, because the more involved you are in the child's life (aside from that being generally a good thing), the less argument your ex has for not being able to work and needed more spousal maintenance etc.

I am currently going through the divorce process, although I don't have kids so my situation is much more simple. However, I was advised by a solicitor that there is really no way to 'artificially' reduce your income in order to avoid your financial obligations. The courts will look at your earnings over the last X years, and base any maintenance on those figures. It's up to you to be able to afford it, which sucks but that's how it is. In short, you are in a crappy situation.

I think the only way out is declaring yourself bankrupt, but this is a bit like biting your nose off to spite your face, because you won't be able to get credit, mortgages, or probably be a company director.

It sounds like your relationship is in a pretty bad state, but my advise would be to swallow your anger and try to be as amicable as possible with your ex, because sadly the law is such that she can make your life very difficult financially. The court's first concern is making sure your child is housed and cared for, and assuming your ex will be the primary caregiver, she is in a position to stay in your marital home (at your cost) until the child leaves secondary education, with you picking up the bills. It's very easy in her position to find ways of avoiding work, and from what I've heard, the courts are nowhere near as aggressive in forcing the primary caregiver to pay their own way providing the child is housed etc.

The other option is to do a disappearing act, but you would then be bailing on your child as well, so I'm sure nobody would recommend that.

Mate of mine did this - declare himself bankrupt. He had his own company (not IT) and then ended up basically working for another company who took over his business.

Never paid a penny in maintenance for his daughter (who was 10 at the time, now 21). Occasionally, even now he chucks her £100 and thats it.

I remember about a year after his divorce he was renting a posh flat, had a new bird, tidy car. Still not paying.

Piss poor attitude if you ask me thats for sure.

[northernladuk]

Mate of mine did this - declare himself bankrupt. He had his own company (not IT) and then ended up basically working for another company who took over his business.

Never paid a penny in maintenance for his daughter (who was 10 at the time, now 21). Occasionally, even now he chucks her £100 and thats it.

I remember about a year after his divorce he was renting a posh flat, had a new bird, tidy car. Still not paying.

Piss poor attitude if you ask me thats for sure.

Obviously spurred on by some idiot say 'Don't give her another penny to sit on a couch nobbing some other bloke'.

I was going to say, looking at this and all your other 'mate' stories, you've got a moronic set of mates.. But birds of a feather and all that.

The sad thing is I almost believed this story....

[LondonManc]

Obviously spurred on by some idiot say 'Don't give her another penny to sit on a couch nobbing some other bloke'.

I was going to say, looking at this and all your other 'mate' stories, you've got a moronic set of mates.. But birds of a feather and all that.

The sad thing is I almost believed this story....

That was set in Chigwell, not Caerphilly. HTHBIDI