Premier-league footballer successful in halving £60k p.a. child maintenance
The case of Re TW and TM (Minors) [2015] EWHC 3054 (Fam)is an appeal by the father against child maintenance orders made under Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989. The appeal was allowed and remitted the matter for rehearing.The father was a well-known footballer who was ordered by Deputy District Judge Drew at first instance to pay maintenance of £5,000 per month for his two children. The Deputy District Judge held that the father's income was £190,000 per annum gross and that he had put his own enjoyment and expenditure first, before the obligations to his children. Mostyn J found that the first instance order of £60,000 was, as a percentage of father's gross income of £190,000, 31.5 per cent, almost double the 16 per cent rate prescribed by the formula in the Child Support Act. Mostyn J commented that the Deputy District Judge had not referred to the Child Support Act and had failed to justify such a departure from the formula. Although the formula was "not written in marble", it provided an important starting point (para 9).
The judgment is available here:A footballer has won a High Court fight over the amount of child maintenance he should pay for his two children. The unnamed player - described as "well-known" and in his early 30s - had complained about the sums a local family court judge had ordered him to hand over. He said Deputy District Judge Jane Drew had been wrong when she told him to pay £30,000-a-year for each child. The footballer said £60,000 a year was about a third of his gross annual income - and was too much. A High Court judge has ruled in his favour. ”
