CHILD MAINTENANCE, CHEQUEBOOKS AND CHAMPIONS 

Published on 05 August, 2024 | Rebekah Edwards

Anyone in paid employment know that a job comes with a degree of scrutiny, regardless of the nature of their profession.

Some positions, of course, are very much in the spotlight and the pressure associated with them is all the more intense.

The performances of elite footballers, for instance, are monitored by their clubs, media and fans but those who reach the very highest levels are these days very handsomely rewarded for their sporting abilities and their profile.

It is not uncommon for players to find their conduct and finances closely considered by the courts in divorce or their children’s needs.

It is less common for judgments resulting from such cases to be published for everyone to read.

However, that is just what’s happened to Manchester City’s Kyle Walker (https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewfc/b/2024/212).

His next appearance after representing England in the final of the 2024 European Championships was in London’s Central Family Court, where the issue under consideration was the financial provision for one of the two children whom he had fathered with his former mistress, the social media influencer Lauryn Goodman.

Although much of the subsequent coverage in the national newspapers has been given over to Walker’s claim that Goodman had been using him as “an open chequebook” (https://www.thetimes.com/article/e56448ae-b11a-463c-a519-395f293b3f6d?shareToken=aee3b543f63ed9f7d97d7e9a4de6df72), it’s perhaps useful to add some important perspective.

At the time that they met, Walker was already in a relationship with a woman who subsequently became his wife in November 2021. Even so, he and Goodman had a son, Kairo, in 2020.

Not long after they agreed the terms of financial support for that child, she fell pregnant with a daughter, Kinara, who was born in June last year.

Walker told the court of his desire to keep his parentage of the second child a secret from his wife, a fact which Judge Edward Hess said Goodman used as “leverage” in financial negotiations.

The player suggested those discussions would not have made it to court, “if I was a painter and decorator”.

In one regard, he is right.

Payments of child support for most families are calculated according to an assessment by the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) (https://www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-worked-out).

When someone’s income exceeds the threshold for determination by the CMS of £156,000 gross per year, then its assessment can be topped up via a court application if the parties themselves cannot agree on the appropriate level of child maintenance.

As Judge Hess spelt out in his ruling, Walker currently earns between £7 million and £10 million a year, well above the CMS limit and certainly eligible for top-up consideration.

I would imagine that there are few decorators whose salaries are in any way comparable. In cases involving far more limited resources, an application to court for financial provision for a child would simply not be appropriate.

Despite Walker’s allegation that Goodman may have been trying to take advantage of his fortune, it is worth pointing out that the court process is dealt with under Schedule One of the Children Act (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/schedule/1)

The emphasis is on arriving at a settlement which provides adequate financial provision for benefit of – in this instance – Walker and Goodman’s daughter, Kinara, and not for Goodman herself.

Deliberations in this case and many others like it will commonly take into account the need for things like housing provision, school fees and cars.

One of the key elements is not ensuring equality between the living arrangements of the child’s parents but avoiding a huge disparity in them.

I should add that the property provided by the paying parent under a Schedule One agreement reverts to them once the child concerned is no longer financially dependent.

Media stories about the dispute between Walker and Goodman drew attention to her requests that he meet the £33,000 costs of air-conditioning at the Sussex home which he had bought and pay £31,200 for “an astroturf football playing area”.

The task in every Schedule One hearing – no matter the public profile of those involved – is to arrive at a fair outcome by assessing the reasonable needs of the child and, in some cases, those of the household. As a result, Judge Hess denied both of those requests from Goodman.

In my opinion, there is one other notable aspect of this case and that is the fact that the judgment was made public.

It is true that the judiciary, led by the President of the Family Division of the High Court, Sir Andrew McFarlane, has been keen to open up the family courts, having concluded that being more transparent about how they operate serves to increase public confidence in them.

Only last month, a pilot project launched in January and allowing accredited media to report on proceedings was extended (https://www.judiciary.uk/reporting-pilot-extended-to-include-private-family-disputes/#:~:text=The%20President%20of%20the%20Family,the%20pilot%20in%20January%202024.)

In matters involving children, though, there is a priority on protecting their interests. The starting point is the prohibition of material which may lead to their being identified.

Lauryn Goodman had contended that should be the case here but, whilst acknowledging that his decision was “quite rare”, Judge Hess described how she had “not just cooperated with, but actively instigated, press coverage placing in the public domain her own children”.

“It sits ill”, he continued, “for a person to come to court arguing for privacy for her children when…she took a payment from the press…to provide journalistic fodder”.

For those reasons and despite Judge Hess stating that it was “certainly quite rare for me, to reach a clear conclusion that…the normal confidentiality restrictions should be dispensed with”, he decided that the “judgment should be publicly reported without redaction or anonymisation”.