Mom frustrated by dad dilly-dallying over maintenance

DEAR MRS MACAULAY,

I am a single mother of two — an 11 and a six-year-old. I was married to their father but we separated shortly after the birth of my second child. He did not do much when we were together, and now it’s worse. Two years ago I took him to the Family Court for child support. He was ordered to pay $3,000 per week, per child, in addition to education, medical, and other expenses, to my bank account. He has never paid the full amount, it’s always short, with excuses. In addition, every month I have to be reaching out for the money.

For this year, I only received money from him twice towards the children’s maintenance, both times being short. I went back to court and took out a summons for him and he hid when the district constable showed up at his home and ignored the phone calls, resulting in me having to get a new court date. We were finally able to get him served, and even though he received the summons, he still doesn’t try to make any payments. He currently owes $124,000 in arrears. Based on your knowledge, will the judge make him pay up before we exit the courthouse? This is really hard on me. I have to be borrowing money in order to pay bills and maintain the kids.

I also plan to ask the judge to let him pay through the court’s office because it always turns into an argument when I ask for the money which he was ordered to pay.

Please give me some advice.

I can feel your disgust and frustration with your estranged husband’s continuous failure to meet his legal and moral obligations. His frequent disobedience of the court orders is clearly contemptuous and he ought to be arrested on warrants issued, and if he does not bring any notable payment, he should not be released (as many judges insist on doing according to law, until he pays either the whole debt, or a substantial part of the sums owed). If he only pays a part of the total owed, then the judge generally fixes a date for him to bring funds to the court until all the arrears are paid up, and during these periods, he must be paying the current sums due each week as well.

It is a pity that you asked him to make payments to your bank account because with such orders, when the respondent is irresponsible and unreliable as your ex-husband clearly is, it causes delays in the pursuit of him to pay and clear up his arrears. You see, you then have to get all your records from your bank and prove to the clerk of court that he is definitely in arrears, and for an actionable period of time.

So it is much better for you to have your order varied to allow him to make all his payments to the court’s office. He would have to do so each week and you can call and go and collect his payments periodically. This would ensure that there’s record of his payments, short payments, and the facts of his non-payments there in the court office , all verifiable by the financial clerk, so that the warrants for his failures to pay can be issued unquestionably from the records of the court’s account office. In fact, in such circumstances, the onus for having a warrant issued for arrears is the clerk’s, but because of the huge volume of the cases dealt with by the court, it is a good idea, when you go to collect from the clerk, to keep a notebook of your own records of payments and non-payments. In this way, the process as the regulations require can be followed as quickly as possible.

Payments to the court’s office would take away or cut down any need for you to pursue him for his ordered maintenance payments, and you and the court would have the true record of his payments and arrears.

At the default hearing when he has been taken to the court on a warrant, you must tell the judge how you have to keep on borrowing money to pay bills and provide for the children’s needs.

You must also carefully consider when you should apply for an increase from the $3,000 per week ordered for each child, because they are getting older and their needs are getting greater. Try and keep records of what you spend each week on them — everything! Then you can use these to prove to the court when you apply for an increase, or when you are having a default hearing about his arrears, so that it is apparent that you and the children’s needs must be better met and the provisions protected.

Please therefore, before the date comes when you have to appear in court, go to the clerk of your Family Court and ask for her to assist you to apply for a variation of your children’s maintenance orders, for the payments by the respondent to be made to the court’s office instead of to your bank account. Please make sure that you do this as quickly as you can, so that the variation can be made and ordered on the next date.

I wish you and your children the very best.

Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-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.