| Maintenance for your husband or wife |
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| Introduction |
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| This article covers maintenance payments following separation and after divorce. |
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| Maintenance payments (known as Periodical Payments in legal terms) are regular payments made by the higher earning partner to the lower or non-earning partner. Unlike other financial settlements, maintenance can continue for life (certainly after divorce, and even after the payer’s death!), so it’s a continuous liability. There are three questions you might want to consider when trying to work out maintenance: |
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Should there be maintenance at all? |
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If so, does it need to go on forever? |
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How do we work out how much any maintenance should be? |
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| Should there be an order for maintenance? |
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| This depends very much on your circumstances. If you’re both working, your marriage was relatively short and there are no children, then maintenance is probably inappropriate and you should probably separate without an order for maintenance, known as making a 'clean break'. |
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| If your situation is different then there is a stronger argument for maintenance payments. However, you might consider a clean break in exchange for a larger share of the property. If you are in a situation where you are not likely to be able to pay maintenance in the foreseeable future, you might also want to consider a clean break. |
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| On the other hand, if one of you has a well-paying job and the other is looking after young children, paying some amount towards maintenance might be appropriate. |
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| Does maintenance have to go on forever? |
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| Not necessarily. It might go on until the children are grown up, or until the non-earning partner has undergone some training to enable him/her to get a job. Again it depends on your circumstances. For example, if your children are grown up but your partner hasn’t worked since they were born, he or she would need to have maintenance for the time needed to get back into the job market and, if you have a high standard of living, he or she might also need to be recompensed (in capital, perhaps) for any large imbalance in his or her future standard of living. |
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| Pension sharing might also be relevant in determining how long a maintenance order should run. |
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| Maintenance orders stop on the remarriage, co-habitation or death of the person who is receiving the payments. |
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| How do we work out the amount? |
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| Unless you are very wealthy, when you separate you are likely to have to make some adjustments to your standard of living, whether you are the payer of maintenance or the recipient. It is also always worthwhile to think about how maintenance is going to affect state benefits if one of you is in receipt of these. |
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| A good starting point is for each of you to make a list of all your reasonable outgoings (or likely outgoings if you’re still living together). Make this as detailed as possible and don’t forget to include any child maintenance in your outgoings if you have children. Then note down your respective incomes from all sources (so include state benefits, child maintenance if you’re the one receiving it, share dividends etc. as well as your earnings from work) and deduct the outgoings from the income. |
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| Example |
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| Mr. X has an income of £3,000 net per month. His outgoings, including child maintenance of £450 per month amount to a total of £2,100. Mrs X has an income of £1,950 net per month (including the child maintenance of £450 Mr X is paying). She and the child’s outgoings amount to £2,500. |
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| Mrs X needs £550 to make up the short fall; Mr X has £900 out of which he could pay this. |
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| Further information and help |
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| We provide a range of free articles on divorce and separation. |
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| We also provide a consent order for financial settlement kit that includes detailed guidance notes as well as all the forms, examples and information you need to complete your own consent order. |
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| An important note about your will |
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| When you were married, your old will became void. This does not happen on divorce or separation. If you made a will after you married, leaving your estate to your wife or husband, unless you make a new will, you will still leave your estate to your ex spouse. If you never had a will anyway, maybe it is time that you did. |
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| We provide a range of last will and testament templates to suit everyone. They come with advice notes about aspects of wills and tax. |
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