Court papers from the other mother

I have a good life, one which I thoroughly enjoy. But it tends to be somewhat of a rollercoaster ride most of the time. Some of this rollercoaster is due to factors that many other people also experience; money problems, selling a house, family highs and lows etc. But I have an added factor that not all people have, a special and unique factor that is a constant thorn in my side. This thorn is also known as the other mother, or the wicked witch. I wonder sometimes how my life would be without her and the many little surprises she throws our way. Normal I imagine!

For example, one Friday afternoon a few weeks ago I was busy getting Emmeline ready to go to the swimming pool when the doorbell went. I looked through the peep hole and seriously considered not opening the door to the rather serious looking gentleman outside, but when he buzzed again I decided that he wasn’t selling life insurance and really did want one of us and so I opened up. 5 minutes later I was closing the door with court papers in my hand for xavi from the other mother! Definitely not life insurance then.

So I tore open the envelope and had a quick read through it, which turned out to be not so quick as it was a legal document in Spanish! But I got the gist of it and boy did it make me laugh and infuriate me at the same time! It made me laugh because the things she claimed just made her sound like such a victim – something she does all the time! But infuriating because these same claims were actually lies about Xavi, blatant, blatant lies!

I immediately got on the phone to Xavi. I told him about the papers but he was all calm about it and told me not to stress and that he would have a look at it when we got home. Ok, not what I needed, I needed to bitch about it in English! So I got on the phone to my mom and had a good old bitch about it!

So what were the court papers all about? Well the other mother has asked for a modification for the shared custody papers. What modification? Well, currently they each have to deposit 200eu into Yaincoa’s account to pay for his school fees, school books, extra medical expenses etc. Well the other mother doesn’t want to pay anything at all now. Nothing. Zero. Nada! She wants Xavi to pay everything. Why? Apparently she doesn’t have enough money. She used to own a company, she doesn’t anymore because it went bust, and when it went bust she was in about 20,000euros or so of debt. So instead of sorting it all out, she didn’t and it is now at the point where the government automatically take out a portion of her salary every month (‘Embargo’ in Spanish). We already have a court order against her for not paying her share of this maintenance for more than two years, and the court ruled that when her current embargo’s are finished, they will start a new embargo for the maintenance money. She now owes around 5000 eu to the account. This embargo could and probably will only occur in several years time. Probably when yaincoa is in high school or starting bloody university!

So anyway, she says she doesn’t have enough to pay her maintenance. Now on paper this may be the case. Salary of 1000eu, rent of 675eu. Where would you find another 200eu for child maintenance and then buy food, clothing, mobile phones etc? Sounds bad huh? Except that we are pretty convinced that she gets cash in hand for some of her hours she works. She drives a car everywhere (petrol costs more than metro), I am sure that she eats at least one meal a day in the restaurant by her work (plus coffees etc), she naturally has brown, curly hair but recently changed it to blonde and straight – how much does that cost in a hairdresser? And she bought Yaincoa a 360eu X Box and possibly the 150eu Kinect for Christmas. She always walks around done up from head to toe in clothing that is certainly not from H&M. Now is it just me or does that not exactly sound like someone who is down and out in the money dumps? And seriously, if you had to pay maintenance for your child but things were slightly tight, would you not pack yourself a sandwich to take to lunch every day to save money? Or get the metro? Or not have a complete hair overhaul that has got to have cost hundreds? Or perhaps find a second job during the weeks that you didn’t have your child?

The other thing that strikes me as bizarre is this. After receiving our original court order for not paying, she started to deposit 90eu a month for her son (as advised by her lawyer). She has done this for 5 months. So, if she had been depositing this money for 5 months, and nothing has changed in her financial situation, why can she suddenly not pay one cent?

Apparently the solution is to try and get the daddy to pay for everything. Until yaincoa was 6, she had full custody, therefore xavi paid her 300eu every month and he obviously had his visitation with Yaincoa. She paid for everything else, how it is when someone has custody. However in the eyes of the other mother she paid everything all by her lonely little self. She doesn’t remember this 300eu that paid for school, she doesn’t remember that it was her choice to have a private doctor for him, she doesn’t remember that when xavi had him every single weekend, he paid for everything necessary during this time with his son. So there is a big part of me that is sure that she is doing this as revenge as so many of her emails from the last 2 years are filled with statements of ‘I paid everything, now you pay everything. You owe me a lot of money’

Our lawyers have gone to her lawyers and offered that she pays 150eu and Xavi pays 200eu. She said no.

Our lawyers then went to her lawyers and offered that she pays 100eu and Xavi pays 250eu. She said no.

Our lawyers then went to her lawyers and offered that she pays 70eu and xavi pays 250eu. Looks like she has said no.

Why have we made so many offers? Because on paper the personal tax paper they have order that xavi shows to show his earnings for 2009 (2010 hasn’t been done yet) show that he has earned quite a lot. It was a good year yes, every other year shows half or one third of that amount. And he has about 3 times the outgoings as she does.

So what will we do now? We will go to court and we will fight. We will show everything we can to show that we are not in the best position and whilst we have no problem accepting that we pay more, we will fight so that she has to pay something, anything for her own child! What are our chances? Well it probably depends on what kind of judge we get! Worst case scenario is that we have to pay all school costs, medical costs and court costs. Best case is that she has to pay something!! Even though we may lose, we want to fight, we want to give it everything we can and we don’t just want to lie down and accept what she says simply because she is a bitter cow. I am slightly optimistic, but not hugely as the law is still so unfair to fathers. Just the other day a man got denied shared custody of his child because he lost his job. And yet here we have a mother who does nothing for her child and is claiming that she cannot pay for him however there is no danger of her losing her shared custody.

I don’t know, but I am hoping for the best.