Hubby left me penniless
Dear Mrs Macaulay,
I was living in the UK with my husband for a few years, but after retirement he wanted to come back home to Jamaica due to sickness. My retirement would have been some years later, so I did not want to come until my retirement but he convinced me that we could live off his pension until my retirement pension was due. My husband sold our marital home in the UK and made a home here in Jamaica. I was here taking care of him and to my surprise, his children in the UK came and took him without my consent. He left me without any money to take care of our home or to pay bills. He even left with the money that we had from our marital home that we sold. It’s been over a year now and I don’t even know where in the UK he is living. Thank God for my friends and family. They are the ones that are helping me out financially. I would like your advice on what to do to get maintenance from my husband.
It is terrible that you have found yourself in this situation of having being left without secure shelter and without any income by your husband, who permitted and consented to return with his children to the United Kingdom.
From the contents of your letter, you conducted yourself as a caring, ‘obedient’ and responsible wife. Unfortunately, you forgot to take care of and be responsible to yourself. You were caring about your husband’s wishes and needs, but not about yours.
My dear, you ought to have made sure that your situation was protected and secure when you allowed him to convince you to leave the UK against your personal best interests and come here to look after him during his illness.
Clearly, your husband went away and made all the arrangements for all the monies to be transferred to the UK and then left with his children, with the full intent of leaving you without any means of support.
Anyway, you have asked what to do to get maintenance from him.
You can apply for maintenance, but you have the problem of not knowing where in the UK he is residing. Do you not have the address or the name of the workplace of any of his children? If not, why not? Would he not have contacted some of the friends you had in the UK? Have you contacted any of them to seek information about him? If you cannot contact them and have no information, there is the process of substituted service, which you can apply for, after you have filed your substantive application for maintenance. If the court agrees and makes the order, then you stand a chance of succeeding in having the maintenance orders for which you filed your substantive application granted.
This process can be used by you whether you make your application for maintenance here or in the UK. I would say, however, that the UK would be better because that is where he took all his assets, having liquidated the matrimonial home in the UK before you came here.
What about your pension in the UK? Are you planning to go there, with assistance of course, to see about that? If so, contact a solicitor there — you can check whether you can get one on a legal aid basis, proving your circumstance of lack of finances and financial support due to your husband’s actions.
This is the best I can do to advise you. There is no other way for you to get maintenance from your husband except by way of a court order. Then even after the order is made, it will be impossible to collect payments pursuant to the order if he did not contest your application with personal service having been done away with. Through substituted service, a number of advertisements (Notices of Proceedings) are placed in a newspaper. I assume you know which newspaper your husband liked to read — you should have it named in your application. Proof that the publications were published as ordered must be provided in an Affidavit of Service with copies of the said publications exhibited thereto.
You need the advice of a solicitor to whom you must give more details about your circumstances with your husband and about his actions than you have put in your letter to me. I fear that unless you discover his address, you will have no chance of obtaining any maintenance from him. So you must first make every effort to find him.
I wish you the best of luck.
Margarette May Macaulay is an attorneyat- law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com; or write to All Woman, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.
DISCLAIMER:
The contents of this article are for informational purposes only and must not be relied upon as an alternative to legal advice from your own attorney.
