WIFE WANTS HUSBAND TO PAY FOR ADULT CHILD MAINTENANCE FOR THE REST OF THE CHILD’S LIFE
Milbrand & Milbrand [2020] FCCA 2649 (25 September 2020)
The matter before the Court is an application for adult child maintenance. The applicant-mother seeks that the respondent father pay $400 a week, in respect of the parties’ child, X, born in 2001. She seeks that this sum continue for the rest of X’s life and that it be indexed by the consumer price index once per year. The respondent father says he is unable to pay.
Facts:
Tragically, X has had a very, very difficult medical history. The mother seeks adult child support which ceased in December 2019.
The father said he does not have any money. He has bills coming in and is $1,200 overdrawn. He is paid monthly and contributes $1,500 to the mortgage per month. It was put to him that by 31 December 2019 he had paid $2,590 over and above the minimum requirements. He said he had not put any extra money in. Rather, the mortgage had been reduced because of COVID. He always pays $359 a week. He has a 30-year mortgage with 13 years to go.
Issue: Should the court grant the relief sought by the mother?
Law:
Analysis:
He owns his own home and that he has paid the first 17 years of his 30-year mortgage. He appears on track to complete it without undue difficulty. The mother owns no property. If she did indeed obtain $60,000 as part of a marriage property settlement, it is plainly all gone now. The mother’s evidence is that she struggles to pay her bills and has indeed had to pawn property from time to time to do so. It is a stark and difficult circumstance. It is a small wonder that she suffers from depression, given the general pressures upon her life. Her dedication to X speaks in the highest terms of her view of the proper discharge of her parental responsibilities.
It should be noted that the mother and X’s financial circumstances are, on their unchallenged material, extremely strained.
The appropriate outcome is that he should pay $200 per week in child maintenance. The court does not propose indexing by the consumer price indexing simply because, at the moment, we are in something akin to a zero-inflation circumstance and there is no certainty of any wage increases on the father’s part. What the court proposes to do is to fix a period for payment of five years in the first instance.
An order that Mr Milbrand (father) pay child support for the whole of the child’s life is, absent some unusual tragedy, effectively an order that he pay for the whole of the rest of his life. His retirement circumstances remain unclear. If he is still in employment at 65 (or 67 more likely by that stage) he will have paid off his mortgage and a significant expense will have disappeared. However, it is far too early to say what his superannuation will be.
Nonetheless, in circumstances where the father’s weekly expenditure seems to me to have slack amounting to $200 per week, leaving aside his salary sacrificing into superannuation, a figure of $200 a week is indeed just and equitable.
While X’s future seems to be very sadly all too clear, an order that the father pay indefinitely is not appropriate. A five year period will give the mother some measure of reasonable certainty but will enable both parties to revisit the matter when X’s future perhaps may be slightly more clearly defined than it is at the present time.
Conclusion: Accordingly, the court orders that the father pay $200 per week in child support for the next five years.