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Hi, just looking for some advice and hoping someone knows the answers!
I left my wife 2 years ago and have 3 young children aged 9,7 and 2. I have moved in with my partner and am self employed earning under £8000.00 a year at the moment. My ex-wife works 30 hours a week over 5 days so she can pick the children up from school everyday which works well.
Access arrangements suit us both at the moment but my partner and I get no financial support whatsoever. We have agreed access with the children's mum from January 2012 to August 2013 in line with the school terms. My ex-wife has agreed to having the children 199 nights and I have them 317 nights out of a possible 516 nights (approximately 60% whereas my ex-wife 40%).
Basically this means on paper it looks like I am the primary carer although she has all the financial benefits whereas I have none and pay her maintenance at £15.00 a week which is over the CSA guidelines which say I should pay £5.00 a week.
I've not wanted to rock the boat as settling the children in a new routine since our separation has been our primary concern and I wanted my divorce to go through without any restrictions to access.
Now I have received confirmation that my divorce should be finalised within 6 weeks I feel it is now appropriate to sort the financial matters out fairly but do not know where I stand legally.
I do feel morally obliged but cannot support the children as I would like because of our financial situation.
Any help would be much appreciated, just to give me a starting point.
Many Thanks for reading!
Hi and welcome on here.
It does indeed look as though you are the primary carer, and I would say that you should be receiving child benefit and potentially your ex should be paying you maintenance rather than the other way around. I understand that you don't want to upset the arrangements, but you will either have to accept the situation as it is, come to an arrangement with your ex (eg a family based arrangement) or go all out for the child benefit and maintenance. I would say, that you should let the divorce go through and then talk to your ex to come to an amicable arrangement - perhaps you get the child benefit and pay about 40% of this to your ex for her share of the time and you split essentials such as uniform - it really is down to any compromise you can reach.
We can ask the child maintenance options to give an opinion if you can give an idea of which way you think you'd like to go.
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