I am often asked about how helpful the Family Maintenance
Enforcement Program is in assisting parties with enforcement of their court orders or
separation agreements. The answer is, FMEP can be
extremely helpful, but only if your agreement or court order is specific
enough.
Some basic facts about FMEP can be found here :
- FMEP is a free service of the BC Ministry of Justice helping families and children entitled to support under a maintenance order or agreement.
- Anyone with a maintenance order or agreement can enroll in FMEP.
- There are various ways to send or receive maintenance payments and also actions can be taken if payments are not made.
One of the biggest problems that keep people coming back unnecessarily
to lawyers, and spending more money than they often are trying to collect, is
poorly worded court orders or agreements for sharing of children’s expenses or “section
7 expenses”. Section 7 expenses are
discretionary by nature, meaning that, a court “may on either spouse’s request,
provide for an amount to cover all or any portion of the following expenses……” The online version of the Guidelines found here
can help you understand whether the
expenses you want to share are extraordinary or whether they are covered by the
child support you currently receive or pay.
The key is to have your court order or separation agreement
worded in such a way that avoids challenges and arguments down the road when
you are trying to get payment for little’s Susie’s ballet class or little Jonny’s
summer camp fees that weren’t mentioned in the Separation Agreement. These expenses change over time as your
children grow, so you may need to amend your agreement, but if you start out
with clarity, it is much easier to make changes. The FMEP website gives clear instructions
about how your agreement should be worded, so FMEP can collect payments on your
behalf and take enforcement action if required.
The agreement needs to clearly state the type of expense, the name of
the child to whom the expense relates, the exact amount one parent is to pay
the other for the expense, the date payments are to start and the frequency of
payments. If your agreement contains a
vague statement that “parent one will pay to parent two his or her proportionate
share of the agreed upon extraordinary expenses” FMEP cannot collect payment on
your behalf if you send them receipts for little Susie’s ballet class because your
agreement is not specific enough.
Yes, it does take time to be precise in agreements, and when
you are on the home stretch in that last lawyer meeting, these are often the details
that get missed and I hear people say, “oh we can work that out ourselves”. That is all fine and good when you are
getting along, but when it comes to sharing of larger expenses like university
tuition, which you may not have anticipated at separation because your children
are young, you do not want to be in a position of having difficulties because
of a poorly worded agreement.
What should you do? Read
through the child support guidelines to determine if the expenses you are
trying to share are indeed “extraordinary” and then draft a clearly worded agreement
about how these costs will be shared between you and the other parent. Have a look at the FMEP website where you
will find the answers to many of your questions about enrolment and
enforcement.
And finally, talk to a lawyer before you sign anything.
