MACDONALD'S HABIT OFF THE MENU

MACDONALD’S HABIT OFF THE MENU (NEWS)

(Monday Telegraph 4^th April 2011) By Reporter: Shelly Hadfield.  

A Court has told a mum she can no longer expect to fund her son’s $60 a week McDonald’s habit.

The woman, in court seeking spousal maintenance, sought $1400 per week for living expenses for herself and two of her children.

She told the Federal Magistrates’ Court, sitting in Victoria, her teenage son had a ‘Macca’s habit.’

But Federal Magistrate Evelyn Bender said the woman had to alter her lifestyle.

There is no doubt in my mind that the amount claimed by the wife by way of weekly discretionary expenditure in her financial statement is excessive, Ms Bender said.

She can no longer expect to live as she may have prior to separation, paying $100 per week in gifts, $150 on jeans for (youngest child) as well as financing his ‘Macca’s habit’ and providing him with pocket money, she said.

In an interim decision, Federal Magistrate Bender ordered the businessman husband to pay the wife $800 per week plus the mortgage on the former matrimonial home.

He was also ordered to pay home and contents insurance, land and water rates, school fees, private health insurance and the cost of sending their intellectually disabled child to a special centre.