Marriage Breakdown & Likely Spouse & Child Maintenance

I just wondering if someone could give me some outline advice on the scenario below. I am well aware that to diffinitively explore this, I need to see a solicitor.

Basically I am experiencing significant family difficulties, myself and my wife are married for just over 10 years, are in our early 40s and have 4 kids under 6 years of age. My wife does not work outside the home. We are still together in the family home, jointly owned but things are now very strained.

My aftertax income is about 78K and dropping, I have a contributory defined benefit pension, our house is worth very roughly 500K net (after mortgage is taken out ). We have no other properties. We have joint savings of about 100K. We have no other loans.

What is in rough terms the likely spousal support /child maintenance / pension adjustment likely to be if we split up? My wife clearly cannot work at the moment but could work part time in the medium term but probably does not want to.

I am well aware that family law is "in camera" and that there is a whole range of possible outcomes, even if someone who knows about these things could give me some rough outline/ range of possiblities in advance.

Could someone also suggest a family law lawyer in dublin city centre who might give me a picture of the likely outcomes?

Thank you in advance

You basically have two choices - work out settlement issues between you or ask a judge to do so. One is inexpensive and the other could cost you a great deal of money and even more heartache.

The best outcome is one you agree upon yourselves and the best advice I or anyone else can give you is to attend Family Mediation to resolve these issues.

In summary:
(I am not a legal professional, but volunteered in this area for some time)

Both parents are obliged to support their children to the age of 18 (or 23 if in full time education); given the age of your children, it would be understandable if that support was provided at present in the form of primary care by your wife and paid child maintenance by you.

If you wife is not working she can look to you for spousal maintenance; the one advantage of spousal maintenance is that it's tax dedcuctable in your hands, provided you have a court order.

Both parents can claim additional One Parent family tax credits.

It's impossible to say what the actual figures might be. Child maintenance is based on each parents income and expenditure - not on the child's costs.

There's a spread sheet on www.solo.ie - it's a handy checklist but it is a bit out of date unfortunately.

The maximum that can be awarded in the District Court for Child maintenance is E150 per child per week; higher amounts can be awarded in the Circuit Court.

Re Pension adjustments and the family home - there are any number of variations as to what could happen here, again you need to consider what your best outcome would be.

I know you are asking in relation to possible maintenance but the one thing that jumped out at me is that you have 4 kids under 6. This would put a strain on any marriage good or bad. Priorities change, time is lost, and you can lose touch with each other.

Is there any way you could try and work hard at the marriage for a while, try to reconnect and see how that will go.

Other than that without knowing the mortgage amount you seem to have a high equity so I would think best thing may be to sell house buy two separate houses hopefully mortgage free. Then at least you won't have the burden of paying a mortgage and rent or two mortgages.
Try mediation too in working out amicable payments.

Best of luck with it all.

Thank you very much for your helpful comments. I am basically trying to explore "what if" scenarios and I take on board what you are saying

niceoneted said:

jumped out at me is that you have 4 kids under 6. This would put a strain on any marriage good or bad.

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This also jumped out at me, have two kids under two, the youngest just started sleeping the night and really our house is a different place as 8.30pm all in bed, time for ourselves.

Iv three to get ready to go anywhere and having four must be crazy.......Best of luck

barry2011 said:

Thank you very much for your helpful comments. I am basically trying to explore "what if" scenarios and I take on board what you are saying

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It seems from this comment that there is still some hope that the split may not occur. My advise is that you put your efforts into solving the difficulty as the alternative is far from a 'walk in the park' either.

Good luck and all the best to you and your family.