New here -- Child support Q

[ani]

Hey everyone,

I'm about to join the single mums very soon.... we're filing for divorce a little later this summer and me & LO are moving out soon (to a different country actually, it's a little complicated!).

Anyway, as we haven't done all the divorce papers yet, I'd like to ask for your help and opinions. I don't want a court decision on child support, but want to do a separate written agreement just between the two of us. My husband is not a bad guy, and I am sure he will be pretty responsible with giving what he can. On a general level, we agree to split the costs of our son.

But, right now I landed a job that will pay much more than his, and he also got accepted to university, which would mean 4 yrs of no earnings at all for him. So as long as I'm making enough myself, I'm happy to finance it all. Also I don't want to stop him from studying.

Afterwards, when he can, I'd like him to pay 50% of it.

But how do we word this? Something in the spirit of that we generally agree to split it in half, but when one person is ok to take over the full responsibility, we can do that? I'm not very good with this sort of legal language that would make it clear and simple.

Ideas?

 

[ani]

Oh, and another question, too actually, I hope you all have some good tips:

We want to write down for the bit about visitation rights etc. that LO will be living with me but his dad will have access whenever. We both want him to be able to see the kid as much as he wants, I'd love for them to spend lots of time together although at least at first it will be very little, as we'll be living in different countries. Hopefully one day we will be closer to each other and he can see LO more.

Anyway, if we just write "whenever he wants", this could be twisted into him having LO ALL the time if he wants and whenever, like when i've decided to take him on a holiday he could stop me by insisting on seeing him. He'd have black on white to say he could do it. I don't think he ever would, but better just be careful now. So we need to put down something about "within the limits of reason" or "when mutually agreed on" (but this would give too much power to me, as I could always say "i don't agree") or something else.... I just don't know what!

Help?