YFA v YFB

Facts

YFA, the Mother, applied in MSS 2758 of 2025 under s 71 of the Women's Charter 1961 to enforce a consent order made after the parties' divorce. Under that order the Father, YFB, was to pay her $1,500 a month as maintenance for their two children.

The Mother did not say the Father had failed to pay at all. Her complaint was that he had chosen to pay the money straight to the children instead of to her, and that after paying for one child's dental treatment he had taken those sums off the monthly maintenance on his own. The matter was tried before a magistrate of the Family Court on 28 April 2026, with both parties acting in person.

Issues

1. Whether paying the maintenance directly into the children's accounts, instead of to the Mother, left the Father in arrears.
2. Whether the Father was entitled to deduct the Mother's share of the dental costs from the monthly maintenance.

Holding

The court allowed the Mother's application. It found the arrears to be $1,200, being her share of the dental costs that the Father had deducted, and ordered him to pay that sum in instalments of $200 per month into her designated bank account on the last day of each month.

Reasoning

On the direct payments, the court accepted that the consent order required payment to the Mother. But the Father had in fact maintained the children by sending the money to their own accounts, which they used for daily expenses, and the Mother herself had passed on what she received to the teenage children in the same way. He had not followed the strict wording of the order but had kept to its purpose of providing for the children, so these payments created no arrears.

On the dental costs, nothing in the consent order allowed the Father to make a deduction on his own. He was mistaken in thinking he could, so the deducted sum remained owing and was enforced against him.

From the judgment