[Solved] Joint custody

Hi there and welcome 🙂

Because both children are 16 and over, they can decide where and with whom they live, your ex wife cant prevent this, even if she disagrees, she doesnt have the power to stop them. Court no longer comes into the equation.

If you pay maintenance through the CSA and the children spend 50% of the time with you then you would be entitled to a reduction. For every night each week that children stay with the non resident parent there is a deduction of 1/7th made , 2 nights per week would be 2/7ths and so on. The non resident parent is the parent not in receipt of the child benefit. I hope that helps 🙂

Thanks alot Nanny Jane. So I guess the child benefit cannot be split between the two parents ? And if I understand that correctly I'd need to reduce the csa payments by 50 pct if they were with me every other week for the full 7 days ? Seems a bit unfair that I'd still be paying her when I have them half the time.

Surely if you were to have your kids eactly 50% of the time (which is potentially possible) then why should you have to pay anything at all?? 😡

surely you should get Maintenance from the other party as well if you're having the kids 50% of the time??? :huh:

after all isn't that called equal parenting and equal rights? :whistle:

...There is a very informative leaflet by the CSA, and theres a link to it in the sticky titled "How does the CSA Calculate Payments" which can be found at the top of the Finance section. This info I got from it, on page 18 ~

If the care of a child is shared equally between both parents the CSA

* Divide the weekly amount of maintenance by 2 and

* reduce the child maintenance by another £7 per week for every child. The figure of £7 is set by law.

In these circumstances, the parent who receives child benefit is called the parent with care.

It might be a good idea for you to read this leaflet as it explains how the CSA calculate payments and there might be other things that can be taken into account. As I dont have anything to do with CSA payments personally, I cant give first hand experience.

i may be being very thick here......or just playing the devils advocate....maybe both.

if i were (i'm not) but if i were to get 50/50 parenting......and the rules say i'm then to split the maintenance in half......why then does my ex not have to pay me maintenance for the time the kids would be with me?
after all for 50% of the time i would be having to do exactly the same as the mother! i.e. keep a roof over their heads, feed and cloth them and look after their well being.....exactly what the ex would be claiming maintenance for.

or am i just missing something here?

...I agree with you dad-i-d, in an ideal world where everything is fair and balanced, this wouldnt happen....but the reality is grossly unfair, and that is why we all come here to try and weave a way through all the [censored] and give each other support and spend hours trawling through googled pages to find the right answers!