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Hi Folks,
New to the forum and looking for guidance. Have been going through a bitter separation for nearly 2 years. Me ex applied for maintenance which I have been paying for my 14 yr old daughter. Never had a problem paying except for the fact that it fiunds her party lifestyle and my daughter gets nothing from her. As well as buying her clothes and taking her out and the like I also set up a bank account for her which I paid extra money into as her mother refused her pocket money. The ex found out about this and made her buy her own clothes out of it. Now my daughter has had enough and is moving in with me. So my question is how will this affect my payments to her? Do I still have to make the payments or do I simply contact the CMS and tell them that she is with me now?. It is likely that my ex will fight this and tell the CMS lies in order to try and keep the money. When the CMS claim began they would not take my word that my daughter was with me 2-3 nights a week because me ex said it was 1 night and I am concerned that my ex will simply deny that my daughter is with me and keep trying to claim. Also how will this affect child benefit and tax credits? How do I apply to get these changed around? Will they believe me if I simply phone and say she is with me? thanks in advance
Hi There,
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You would need to arrange the child benifits before anything else, CSA/CMS look at who is recieving this payment when they work out who pays what so if you aren't recieving child benifits they won't allow you to stop paying and your account will stay open wiith them.
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If your ex, won't allow the child benifit to be changed to you then you would have to apply to the court for a residency order which will decide where your daughter lives at 14 her views would be taken into account when that decision is made.
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If you do gain residency then you would be able to talk with CMS about your ex paying you maintenance for your daughter.
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Once you have child benifits sorted then you can look at working tax credits.
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GTTS
Hello Polmonster
Thank you for your post. With you mentioning that you currently have a case in place with the Child Maintenance Service, you may wish to call them directly to discuss your concerns about your change in circumstances. You may also wish to contact the Child Benefit office at HM Revenue and Customs to inform them that you are now the parent with the main care for your daughter. You can find their contact details listed on Gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/child-benefit. You can also find the contact details for the tax credits helpline on the website at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/tax-credits-enquiries.
In terms of setting up child maintenance, there are a number of ways that you and your ex-partner can do this. Child maintenance can be arranged privately via what we call a family-based arrangement. Even though a family-based arrangement is not legally-binding, it is often the most flexible way of arranging child maintenance as parents can decide exactly what the terms of the agreement will be.
If you are unable to set up a family-based arrangement, you can make an application to the Child Maintenance Service, the Government's new statutory service. Any child maintenance that is managed by them is legally-binding and enforceable.
The Child Maintenance Service will work out child maintenance and then either leave it to you and the other parent to arrange payments between yourselves or where applicable, they can collect payments on a parent's behalf. If you apply, your ex-partner's responsibility to pay will begin from around the point when the Child Maintenance Service contacts her. There is also an application fee and other potential charges to use the Child Maintenance Service.
An alternative to statutory child maintenance is for you and your ex-partner to set up child maintenance via the courts in the form of a Consent Order or Minute of Agreement (for parents that live in Scotland).
To discuss child maintenance in an impartial and confidential manner, you may wish to contact Child Maintenance Options directly. You can find their contact details listed on their website at http://www.cmoptions.org.
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
Thanks for your assistance. Much appreciated
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