Ex not paying towards mortgage and arrears are building

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Messy2024!

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My ex husband and I are separated 17 months after 25 years married, he moved out of the family home and is renting (by choice) in an affluent area of Dublin.

He is paying €750 per month maintenance for 3 children, (he is not involved in their lives at all I am 100% single parent no help) and half any health/educational expenses but not a penny towards the mortgage or house insurance. He is not even paying half the expenses I send him so I have stopped. That works out at €62.50 per week per child which at his salary is not excessive and it is what I asked for anyway as I don't want to rinse someone but I want him to face reality. This is court ordered maintenance for the kids only as I don't want spousal maintenance from him,

I work fulltime decent salary which is so hard to manage with 3 kids to get to and from school/college etc you cannot expect an employer to be understanding of your personal circumstances all of the time but if something happens or an appointment I have to go. My weekly expenses are huge and things just keep popping up on top of utilities, groceries etc. I had to pay €200 for debs tickets last week never a week goes by that something expensive for the kids has to be paid. The mortgage is over €2k month and I am barely managing.

He earns almost double my annual (good sized) salary and I did up a calculation of what he should pay towards the mortgage and what I should pay based on our net pay per month. He cancelled the DD for the mortgage the day he left and stopped paying, he thought giving me €400 towards a mortgage of €2k per month was acceptable it is not. He did the same with the house insurance cancelled that but I set up a new policy straight away.

The mortgage fell into arrears for a few months when the bomb went off so to speak as I got sick with stress and could not work & was in a bad place mentally trying to cope, got the kids into counselling had to be here all the time for them for the first while then but pulled myself back together within 4 months back to work started paying what I could off the mortgage and still am. All is fine with the bank no worries about then coming after me they worked with me and have been very good. MABS have been amazing helped me with Standard Financial statement. The bank cannot tell me about their engagement with him but they can tell me the last payments received and it is all mine he has paid nothing. He has not put a penny off the arrears him and his solicitor said that is my responsibility and that he is "concerned" about the roof over his kids heads but won't be paying. This has to be illegal/wrong.

I need to know is this right he is getting away with not paying a penny towards a joint mortgage?, making out that his living expenses take priority, yes he has to live but we all have choices.

Where do I stand here have I a right to enforce he pays towards the mortgage on top of maintenance. I am outside of threshold to get legal aid and I cannot afford a solicitor at the moment and he refuses to do mediation.

This it really is my fault I need to get tougher I just feel the less engagement with him the better. My health suffered mentally and physically during the marriage and I am flying it now so I really do not want to engage with him as it ends up being a tennis match of denials. We are getting divorced and I intend keeping the house and have told the bank this so I have started the borrower remover package process my worry is he will refuse to sign it.
 
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@Messy2024! Sorry to hear about the situation unfortunately its par for the course.

Do you have a Judicial Separation Agreement or a Separation Agreement? What does this say about mortgage? This is key.

Have you tried FLAC?

I don't think a Bank will remove him from loan - they may from property but their view is he jointly and severally liable. Why do you care if he stays on loan?
 
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Here's my tuppence worth

edit your post and remove the personal stuff - Dublin is a very small place - there's every chance someone will recognise the details.

not only that but the behaviour of either party (assuming no documented violence, abuse etc.,) during the marriage is not of interest to the courts and will not influence the settlement; so there's not much point in posting it.

If you have not done so already, please get to counselling, after 25 years there's a lot of stuff going round in your head & you need someone to talk through it with.

By the sounds of what you have posted, to get any engagement you are going to have to take on a Solicitor; you may feel you can't afford it, but neither can you afford not to.

The property issue has to be settled, maintenance for dependent children, pensions etc.
 
DannyBoyD said:
Here's my tuppence worth

edit your post and remove the personal stuff - Dublin is a very small place - there's every chance someone will recognise the details.

not only that but the behaviour of either party (assuming no documented violence, abuse etc.,) during the marriage is not of interest to the courts and will not influence the settlement; so there's not much point in posting it.

If you have not done so already, please get to counselling, after 25 years there's a lot of stuff going round in your head & you need someone to talk through it with.

By the sounds of what you have posted, to get any engagement you are going to have to take on a Solicitor; you may feel you can't afford it, but neither can you afford not to.

The property issue has to be settled, maintenance for dependent children, pensions etc.
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I am in counselling for over a year now and it has saved me so I am in a much better place personally as I crashed and burned at the start. I have great friend & family support to so I am lucky. I got refused legal aid so I am going to consult with a solicitor this week to get the ball rolling as the family home is what matters. Although court ordered and I am fine with the child maintenance amount, the mortgage can not just be left to me like this.
 
The mortgage is a joint venture and as long as you engage and pay what you can, there is zero chance of you losing your home. So rest easy on that side. Your husband is actually building up his own arrears by behaving like he is and that will come back to haunt him later when things start getting settled. So put that bit worry to the back burner. None of this is easy but keep doing the things your doing and it will eventually sort itself out. Best of luck.
 
How much is the house worth?
How much is the balance on the mortgage?

He could insist that you sell the house and clear the mortgage and split the proceeds. You own the house jointly after all.

My own view in situations like this is that ownership should remain joint and the total cost of the mortgage and his rent should be split evenly. For example, if the mortgage is €2,000 and his rent is €1,000 , then the total is €3,000 and you should pay €1500 each. So he pays you €500.

Presumably you will do a separation agreement at some stage. You should certainly write formally to him asking him to meet to discuss the financial side of the separation or to attend mediation to agree it. If he refuses, you can show that to any judge who is asked to assess your separation or, in the distant future, to rule on whether the house should be sold.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
could insist that you sell the house and clear the mortgage and split the proceeds
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Wont happen while there are dependent children under 18 or 23 if in full time education.

if parties do agree to sell, then so long as there are dependent children, its not a 50/50 split between parents as allowance has to be made for children who have to be housed.

Part of settlement could be house will be sold once youngest child graduates.

However if non resident party has not contributed to payments, they can expect their share to be reduced accordingly.

In any event, OP has to bring in the guns to get this person to the table if they want settlement to progress.
 
Looking at this again & it very much depends on children's ages & OPs income; but allowing for the fact that divorce proceedings could easily take 2 years & cost a serious chunk of money given the likely contention.

I'm wondering if the OP might be as well to just wait it out?

Say youngest child is now in LC & does another 4 years in Uni.

Family home could be sold in 4 years time, arrears would be deducted from non resident parent's share & OP would be free to purchase another home.
 
DannyBoyD said:
Looking at this again & it very much depends on children's ages & OPs income; but allowing for the fact that divorce proceedings could easily take 2 years & cost a serious chunk of money given the likely contention.

I'm wondering if the OP might be as well to just wait it out?

Say youngest child is now in LC & does another 4 years in Uni.

Family home could be sold in 4 years time, arrears would be deducted from non resident parent's share & OP would be free to purchase another home.
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The OP expressed a wish to keep the home. With the current mortgage amount of €2,000 being a struggle this may not be possible.
 
Silversurfer said:
The OP expressed a wish to keep the home. With the current mortgage amount of €2,000 being a struggle this may not be possible.
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As I understand it OP is paying half that amount.

Alternative is to see about getting interest only, though that will require co-operation from non-resident partner.
 
Silversurfer said:
With the current mortgage amount of €2,000 being a struggle this may not be possible.
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Just to be clear.

She may well be struggling but there is almost no chance that she will lose her home.

If she continues to pay what she can afford, the lender won't seek an order for possession. And if they do, no court would grant it.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Just to be clear.

She may well be struggling but there is almost no chance that she will lose her home.

If she continues to pay what she can afford, the lender won't seek an order for possession. And if they do, no court would grant it.

Brendan
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Yes I am aware of that. My comment is in relation to the OP wishes:

We are getting divorced and I intend keeping the house and have told the bank this so I have started the borrower remover package process my worry is he will refuse to sign it.
 
Ah, OK.

@Messy2024!

You really need to clarify your thinking.

On the one hand you complain that your ex is not contributing to the mortgage and on the other hand you want to get him off the mortgage.

The names on the mortgage are not relevant. You want the ownership of the home, the title deeds, to be transferred into your name.

I doubt that he will agree.

So the mortgage is not relevant. Leave him on it. And his credit rating will be damaged.

As part of the divorce proceedings, you will agree what will happen with the house and your pension funds and maintenance.

No need to engage with the lender now.

You could pay half the monthly repayments and tell the bank to pursue him for the balance. Or do the calculation I did above and pay 75% of the monthly repayments. You would go into arrears but it would force the issue.

Brendan
 
On the one hand you complain that your ex is not contributing to the mortgage and on the other hand you want to get him off the mortgage.
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It may seem contradictory, but I can understand the OPs point of view - either the non-resident partner contributes to mortgage or they sling their hook.
 
The OP is using the house and it seems to me that the mortgage interest is analagous to rent being paid to the bank for the use of the banks interest in the property. So part of that is OP's rent, part the children's rent.

The ex should be contributing half of the children's portion of the interest/rent, but not his portion of the interest as he is renting another place, so around 30% of the mortgage interest. Presumably the maintenance figures don't include this amount for housing. The ex presumably owns half of the equity and if you applied a yield to the money they have tied up (e.g. 3%), they are in effect already contributing that amount toward housing the family on top of the maintenance.

Whether they should be forced to pay down the equity portion of the mortgage when they don't live there and it can easily be accounted for later on sale seems like a tricky question. From the bank's perspective the answer is yes, they borrowed the money on condition that they would pay it back and are jointly liable.
 
RonnieShinbal88 said:
The ex should be contributing half of the children's portion of the interest/rent, but not his portion of the interest as he is renting another place, so around 30% of the mortgage interest. Presumably the maintenance figures don't include this amount for housing.
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It doesn't quite work that way. Children have the right to be maintained by both parents, that maintenance figure is based on both parents income and outgoings; it's not related to 'child costs'.

If the parents were still married the children of the marriage would benefit from the household income; the same is considered to hold true if the parents separate. It is also true that if the household income declines, then extras/ discretionary items have to be cut.

If the non-resident partner continues to pay an equal share of the joint mortgage, they can reasonably expect an equal share in the equity when the property is sold.

In many respects, it can be a good investment for a non-resident parent; it's included as part of their outgoings for child maintenance assessment & they will 'get it back' when the property is sold.
 
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