Hi, new to this site as hopefully I can draw on others experience. My 16 year old daughter recently moved in with me as it is much easier for her to access college where she is undertaking A levels. My question regards maintenance. My former wife and I divorced in 2005 and made a mutual, documented (by solicitors) agreement on monthly maintenance, I have paid this each month without fail and even increased it voluntarily in 2011 to reflect increased costs etc. As my eldest has now moved in with me I clearly wish to adjust the payments to my ex, we have two children together and the youngest still lives with her, would I be naive in thinking that as she has one child and I have one child all is even and I would not be expected to contribute either way and her neither? or would I still be expected to pay half of the original agreed sum for the child who still lives with her? I also assume I will be able to apply for and hopefully receive child benefit for the one who lives with me, my ex wife is still claiming this even though the eldest has lived with me for the last month.
Any comments welcome.
Regards Paul.
Hi Paul
I think it's important that you apply for child benefit asap. Whilst your ex is in receipt of that she is also entitled to tax benefits if applicable.
As far as child maintenance is concerned, as it's by court order rather than through the CSA (CMS as it is known now) you would have to apply to the court to vary it, or alternatively you can open a claim with the CMS directly and apply for child maintenance from your ex. Once a court order for child maintenance has been in place for over 12 months it can be overridden by a claim for CMS. However they will look at who is receiving child benefit for the child to determine who is eligible for child maintenance....hence the importance of getting the process to change it over to you started.
If your ex works then a percentage of her gross income will be used to calculate how much she needs to pay and vise versa. It may be in both your interests to sit down and negotiate some new terms, hopefully agreeing that one child each cancels out any maintenance payments.
If your ex is on benefits then she will not be liable to pay towards your daughters upkeep and if she is living with someone else, or has remarried, their income will not be taken into account by the CMS.
Here's a link to the CMS calculator, you can get a rough idea of what you might be expected to pay if you both went through them.
www.gov.uk/calculate-your-child-maintenance
If you are paying into a pension this amount should be deducted before you input you weekly gross income into the calculator, if your youngest child spend overnight contact with you there's a reduction made for this too.
Best of luck
Hi There,
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From reading your post, it seems as though you made an agreement out of court for maintenance and just had this written up via a solicitor, if that is the case, then that agreement would have been for both children living with your ex, so now wouldn't stand (I think that's right)
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As Mojo has said, it would all depend on the circumstances, so if your ex works and earns a wage, then her wage would be assessed as yours would and an amount would be decided on what you would pay each other based on that. That is how CMS would work it out, but if you are able to agree between you, there is nothing stopping you from doing that.
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Also as Mojo has said make sure you apply for CB for your daugher.
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GTTS