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CMS state in their booklet, if there is equal day-to-day care of children, then no maintenance is payable.
@Vik2001 this is from their booklet:
What happens if the day-to-day care of a child is equal between a paying parent and a receiving parent?
In this situation, the paying parent does not have to pay any child maintenance for that child.
so ideally you would need a court order stating there is 50/50 equal day-to-day care of children. I don't have it but it would look something like 3 day on, 3 day off. or 1 week on, 1 week off with kids.
CMS will only accept 50.50 if there is a clear court order confirming or both parents agree, otherwise if there is a dispute they use many factors such as who takes to Dr's, dentist, what days of care, overnights etc.. As keepitsimple says it's not as straightforward..
what is the admin fee % CMS charge if i was to make payments via them?
@Vik2001 they have option called Direct pay. with that you just sent money direct to your ex's bank account, and you don't pay charges. the other option is called collect and pay. They use this as enforcement if a parent is not paying. with that they add 20% onto the payments.
Cks would charge you an extra 20% on top of amount payable and then from the amount your ex receives they would deduct 4%. This is only for collect and pay where you have a history of not paying.
What you can actually do is open a case with CMS and pay £20 to do so. They then work out how much you should pay and then you can pay that amount directly to your ex without any further CMS fees. Just keep proof of payment or ensure it is paid via bank transfer with the payment clearly identifiable and you would then be fine.
Hope this helps.
@Daddyup hi I keep getting worried about cms when I don’t even have a child i keep thinking that even if I’ve labelled it as child maintenance and have proof of standing orders that the cms can still just say I’m in arrears and take whatever they want off me and it’s making me anxious because I don’t want to be in any arrears when I’ve definitely payed
to add to the above, make the reference in your payment "child maintenance" - that way it is crystal clear what the money is for, and CMS can't later come back and say it's for something else (has happened before)
@actd so if I did this there’s no way cms can say I’m in arrears for example if the resident parent was to make up that I wasn’t paying when I was
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