[Solved] Equal Parenting - Do I have to pay Maintenance?

Hi Ollie_123,

I am sorry to read that you are going through a separation at the moment. How are you doing?

If you come to a family based arrangement then you can decide what ever you want between the two of you, however if your ex decides to raise this with the Child Maintenance Service then the parent who receives the child benefit is normally the recipient of Child Maintenance. You can calculate exactly how much the paying parent is liable to pay by using this Child Maintenance Calculator

If you want to try to work out a family based arrangement with your ex, then it would be worth you checking out Splitting Up? Put kids first which will help you to create a Parenting Plan which you and your ex can use to form the basis for a discussion about how you would like things to work going forward.

We have some useful articles regarding Child Maintenance here.

Keep talking

Gooner

Gooner - thanks for taking the time to reply, it's much appreciated.

I'm doing ok thanks, It is very tough, easily the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with in my life so far. But other people go through it and come out the other side so I try to remember that.

Thanks for the links you posted. Very useful. I didn't realise that it's the child benefit that could be a deciding factor if the Child Maintenance Service get involved. Hopefully they won't. Fingers crossed it'll all be family based arrangements for care and money matters and she won't want courts and CMS involved

I've not looked at the parenting plan plan yet but it sounds good.

Thanks again
Ollie

Hi Ollie

Here's a link to the CMS leaflet which you might find useful if the worse case scenario happens and your ex opens a case with them for maintenance.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/325219/how-we-work-out-child-maintenance.pdf

I think under the new CMS scheme, which came into practice for new cases since December 2012, if care is shared 50/50 then there shouldn't be any maintenance to pay. However the CMS themselves don't seem to understand their own new rules and many Dads in the same situation have had great difficulty getting them to agree that this is the case.

What can also happen is that the parent in receipt of the Child Benefit tells the CMS that care isn't a 50/50 split and in some cases will actually reduce the amount of contact with the other parent to get maintenance increased. I'm not saying that this would happen in your case.

Best of luck with keeping it all within a family based arrangement.

I've copied and pasted this from a thread, it's a response form the CMO expert from about 5 months ago so is current information with regard to the new scheme.

I am William, the Child Maintenance Options consultant

Under the new Government statutory scheme, the Child Maintenance Service, if the paying parent can prove that they carry out an equal amount of day-to-day care as well as having equal shared care then the Child Maintenance Service regards neither parent to be the paying parent so their child maintenance would be set as nil, even if one parent receives child benefits or tax credits as the child’s parent.

Also, Child Benefit should be paid to the parent with the main day-to-day care of the child. So, if your eldest lives with you, you may be entitled to claim that.

With regards to your daughter’s mum’s income, the Child Maintenance Service work out child maintenance using their taxable gross annual income as the starting point. By ‘income’, they mean earnings from employment, self-employment (profits from a business), occupational or personal pensions and certain benefits. So, if your daughters mum receives profits from the limited company, she may be liable to pay maintenance.

You have not indicated how your maintenance is arranged. The different ways maintenance can be set up include the family-based arrangement which is an agreement between the parents without the involvement of the Government or legal system. Although not legally enforceable, this type of arrangement does tend to work better and last longer than other arrangements.

There is also the Child Maintenance Service who can calculate maintenance leaving parents to arrange payment between themselves, or collect payments and pay to the parent/ main carer.

There is also the Consent Order (Minute of Agreement in Scotland which differs from a Consent Order), which is an arrangement agreed through the courts.

If you would like further details about the different options available to set up maintenance, you can contact Child Maintenance Options. Contact details are on the website www.cmoptions.org.

Regards

William

Here's a link to a previous thread that gives some info about legislation regarding the new scheme and 50/50 shared care.

http://www.dad.info/forum/child-maintenance/39169-csa-cms-legislation-shared-residence

You could print these off and give them to your ex to show her that there's no statutory requirement for you to pay maintenance because of the shared care arrangement you have together.

Thanks Mojo, that made for some interesting reading,

I certainly am worried that contact might be decreased so that maintenance has to be paid. That would be really bad. Get to see my children less, and have to pay for the privilege.

Do you know how you might prove that care is shared 50/50? Numbers of hours/days with them? Cooking for them? Would dropping them off and picking them up from school come into it? What others things define care? Homework? Days out? Washing their clothes? Taking them to clubs?

I suppose I'm just trying to prepare myself for the conversation with her. We've agreed who looks after who and when, and the result is that I will have the children 6 .5 days out of every 2 weeks. Which is slightly less than half but the focus of what I was saying was that we should have equal responsibility for looking after them, and I'm not worried that she has them for an extra half a day every fortnight.

Thanks for all the advice and information.

Hi there

Proving it is immensely difficult without a court order stating 50/50 shared care....and even then it can be an uphill task.

Even though there's only half a day between you in the amount of care you both give, strictly speaking it would affect how the CMS would look at it and as she is in receipt of the Child Benefit then I don't think you would be successful if a case were opened with the CMS.

There is an imbalance in the system IMO which is unfairly slanted towards the mother. As has been said, it's far better for you to try and negotiate a family based agreement. The CMS make a reduction of one seventh of the maintenance for each overnight stay a child has with the non resident parent, perhaps you can work out an amount based on that.

Or calculate how much money you both have coming in, for instance

Your income £2000 p.m.
Her income. £1500 p.m.

Which leaves a difference of £500 in your favour. If you were to offer £250. p.m. To her as a maintenance payment that would equalise your monthly income she may see that as fair. Obviously the calculations may be more complex as you may need to factor in you housing expenses etc ....just a suggestion.

Hello Ollie_123

With you having a family-based arrangement in place you may wish to discuss and negotiate with your ex-partner paying child maintenance. Family-based arrangements are not legally enforceable and there are no strict rules or formulas to stick to. Therefore parents can decide the terms of their agreement to suit their current circumstances.

The Child Maintenance Options website has a useful tools and guides section that you and the other parent may find helpful when trying to negotiate your family-based arrangement. This can be found at http://www.cmoptions.org.

The Child Maintenance Service takes shared care into account in different ways depending on the paying parent’s child maintenance rate. Shared care applies if the paying parent provides overnight care for at least 52 nights per year before a liability will be reduced. This is based on the agreement with the receiving parent and or evidence. Shared care is usually determined over a twelve month basis, but shorter periods can be considered in appropriate cases.

I have included a link on how the Child Maintenance Service calculate child maintenance that you may find useful, https://www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-worked-out/how-the-child-maintenance-service-works-out-child-maintenance.

For more information on the different ways to set up child maintenance, you can visit the Child Maintenance Options website.

The DWP have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful. It offers help and support to separating and separated families. The link is: www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation.

Regards

William

Hi William, thanks for your reply.

What sort of evidence could be used to support a shared care dispute if the other parent does not agree?

It may be worth having a word with them to see what they will accept as evidence - the problem often is that if it's disputed, there is no real evidence you can come up with that they will accept.