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Hi All...first post and I'm sure it's a common subject!
Discussing maintenance currently with my wife ahead of the divorce going through.
I'm moving out of the family home and have completed a budget which she has seen...it allows me the cheapest rent I can get in the area, food at £150 a month, my travel expenses to work, council tax, electric, water...etc...just the very, very basics. No clothing allowance, no TV, no medical/dental costs etc.
In short, I don't have enough money to live on to cover my basic needs...I'm short about £150 a month to cover these basics.
She is asking for £120 a month which i just don't have and if she doesn't get it she'll go to the CSA and reckons she'll get 15% of my income automatically. I think that figure may be slightly less due to the amount of time I expect our child to be staying with me but what's the score with the CSA if you can demonstrate that you don't even have enough to live on basics? Can they still take the money off you?
Thanks in advance.
(Oh - by the way there is no residency order...we are aiming to keep away from the court with regards to that and, hopefully, we will be sharing time with our child. At present the plan is that I will have her for three nights a week if that helps).
In short - Yes they can. They take 15% of your net salary (for one child) less the shared care reductions. Whether you can then afford to live on that is irrelevant.
In fact one chap I know when he advised the CSA he couldnt afford to rent, they suggested he house share as it would bring his costs down, when he said he couldnt do that because then he couldnt have his child overnight, they said that wasnt there concern.
The CSA is a very blunt instrument.
The new system will be 12% of gross pay.
And be careful of any overtime on the payslips you send them.
We had been short staffed for sometime so everyone was working overtime to cover the vacancy when I had to send mine to the CSA. Even though I had a letter from my manager saying the overtime was temporary and not guaranteed in the future, they still counted it. 🙁
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