Ten years ago, Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 – which allows an unmarried parent (usually the mother) to seek financial support for the child from the other parent – had little or no impact on the work I was doing; today, it accounts for perhaps one third of my caseload.
Although Schedule 1 is of real help for children whose parents were in a long-standing relationship, it increasingly being used by canny women as a meal ticket to a gourmet life. There is little doubt that sometimes men are targeted by potential gold-diggers – women who are prepared to marry for money, but have discovered they don’t need to go to that trouble.
Schedule 1 isn’t just about the courts requiring the father to pay a certain amount of child maintenance very month; it is about ensuring the child – whether or not the father has any direct involvement in their life – is provided for whilst dependent. This can involve financial support for 20 years or more.
That means, on top of a monthly allowance (£4,000 isn’t untypical in these cases), the provision of a house – suitably furnished and equipped – a car, nursery, school and university fees and money for holidays. Quite often, this represents a settlement that will cost upwards of £2m for what might have been a one-night “adventure”.
What some men still haven’t grasped is that there are women who view becoming pregnant after a dalliance as a career option. For, although the financial settlement is for the child, the mother also benefits. More women are realising just what value can be unlocked in these cases.
A recent example involves the actor Hugh Grant, said to be worth £40 million, who fathered a daughter with a woman with whom he enjoyed – what his publicists described as – a “fleeting affair”. Tinglan Hong now lives in a £1.2 million property (reportedly bought by a cousin of the actor) near Grant’s home in up-market Fulham.
Whilst there is no suggestion Ms Hong deliberately fell pregnant, the fact remains that Grant will be footing a hefty financial bill to ensure his daughter – and her mother – lives in a style not too dissimilar to his own.
Although Grant is unmarried and his spokesman has been quoted as saying “Hugh could not be happier or more supportive”, for many men who find themselves in this situation, the arrival of an unplanned child can cause havoc.
The man may be married or in a long-term relationship and have other children. It is not unusual for a wealthy man to be fighting the demands of a short-term paramour on one front and a divorce on the other.
Then there is the emotional turmoil when children from a marriage or long-term relationship can feel resentful and unsettled by the arrival of a half-sibling, and older children may worry about their inheritance.
For well-off men, then, a brief affair can have unimagined long-term consequences. As my workload suggests, the situation is an increasingly common one. Women have discovered that Schedule 1 enables them to push against an open door. Men with money need to bear that in mind when their eyes alight on a pretty face.
- Neil Hobden is a partner with Benussi & Co
1 comments:
I confess that I'm entirely divided in my own mind as to the moral aspect of this. On the one hand, if the man is sufficiently wealthy, Schedule 1 seems to be a route for a woman to get by the back door what she is not entitled to in her own right. A carer's allowance is to all intents and purposes the equivalent of spousal maintenance, which an unmarried woman is not entitled to by law.
On the other hand, there is a simple precaution which a man can take to avoid finding himself in this situation, so he bears a large measure of responsibility for his predicament.
Of course as a career move, Schedule 1 has severe limitations. The house will revert to the father once the child attains independence. At some point, perhaps rather earlier, the carer's allowance will be cut off. What is the mother's retirement plan?
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