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I have two children with my ex wife, recently the arrangements have changed an my son lives full time with his mum and my daughter lives 6 out of 7 night with me.
I have offered my ex £35 instead of the £97 I have been paying when both kids stayed with me 2/3 nights a week.
Never gone through CSA our arrangement was agreed 7 years ago
Just wanted some advice if anybody can help.
Hi there,
As you have an informal arrangement for paying maintenance then its difficult to advise you, you've offered a reduced amount and reading between the lines your ex is less than happy with it.... The CSA guidelines are that you would both pay each other and the amount would be a percentage of your respective salaries.
You could calculate how much you would both be liable to pay each other as a starting point for discussion....There is an extremely informative sticky at the top of the Finance section called " How does the CSA Calculate Payments" if you follow the link you will find a leaflet by the CSA which explains how amounts are worked out.
Good luck 🙂
Hello Richwibb,
Thanks for your post. I'm William, the Child Maintenance Options Consultant. It's good to hear that you're willing to co-operate with your ex-wife, you're clearly keeping the welfare of your children in mind, which is a great start.
You've mentioned that you already have an agreement in place with your ex-wife. This is called a family-based arrangement. Family-based arrangements give you the flexibility to sort out child maintenance between yourselves. Therefore, as long as you both agree you can decide between yourselves, how much child maintenance will be paid.
If you wish to use the CSA's guidelines then you would both be responsible to pay child maintenance to each other. This is because you are both the paying parent and the receiving parent for one child each. If a case was made to the CSA by both parents, this would be dealt with on a case by case basis.
You can get an idea what your child maintenance payments would be through the CSA using the Child Maintenance Options calculator. You could also use this amount as a starting point for your family-based arrangement.
For further information on how child maintenance is calculated you may wish to contact the CSA directly. Their website is visit www.Gov.uk. For more information about family-based arrangements and access to useful tools and forms online you can visit www.cmoptions.org, or if you'd prefer a confidential chat you could call the Child Maintenance Options team on 0800 988 0988 (free from a landline).
We have a web application that you may find useful, it offers help and support to separating families. You can find this at, http://www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation
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