Mum bought £58k Range Rover with children’s maintenance payments

Friday 21 September 2018

A mother who bought a £57,500 Range Rover with her children’s maintenance payments - and a father worth £1.4million who wanted to halve the school fees he was funding - have been urged by the Royal Court to “put the children’s interests above their own.”

The rowing parents – a former couple with two children described as having “deep-seated animosity between them” – are locked in a legal dispute over how much maintenance each party should be paying.

An agreement was made during maintenance and contact proceedings in 2014 between the children’s father, referred to in the judgement as U, and their mother, referred to as V, that Mr U would pay £60,000 per year to cover their maintenance, schooling and dental care.

Mr U fell behind on maintenance and school payments last year, but a good investment allowed him to make the payment to Ms V, which she then used to buy a second-hand Land Rover for £57,500 with a three-year loan.

Pictured: Ms V used maintenance payments to buy a second-hand Land Rover for £57,500.

Ms V said that this purchase was “an error of judgement on her part which she now regretted” and that she had put the car up for sale again, alongside some of her jewellery.

Meanwhile, Mr U applied to have his maintenance costs halved due to his apparently changing circumstances. He made the application for a reduction in his maintenance payments on the grounds that the level of maintenance he is paying is “unsustainably high” and his means have depleted due to starting his own business – a venture that requires investment of £650,000 from his own pocket - and that his former partner is able to, and should, work.

After the end of a relationship with “a wealthy Jersey person who did not wish her to work, so that she could be available to travel extensively with him", which apparently caused extra "friction" between the pair, the mother said she would be happy to get a job. However, she wished to do this by moving the family to London, where she believed she would have "greater opportunities."

But the idea wasn't necessarily endorsed by Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, presiding, who sat with Jurats Christensen and Dulake.

Pictured: Mr U was applying to pay only half of his children's school fees and maintenance costs, but the Commissioner ruled against him.

The Commissioner ruled that Ms V must find employment in order to increase her means and therefore help to support her children once they have relocated to England.

However, he added in his judgement: "We make the perhaps obvious point that one cannot expect to live in an expensive location such as London unless one can afford it.  It would seem to us that choosing such a location would only be reasonable if the respondent was able to secure highly paid employment there," he wrote in his judgement, adding that London would also be "quite a change in the environment to which the children have become used."

Reaching a decision, the Commissioner said that the maintenance payments should stay the same so as not to jeopardise the children’s welfare or their education for this school year. 

The Commissioner also ruled that attempts must be made to improve the relationship between Mr U and his children, and that the parties should learn to communicate better.

"We expect both parties to put the children’s interest above their own," he said.