[Solved] Child Maintenance and Childcare

No what you pay is what you pay....you would have to tell the PWC you wanted her to take the child care payments out of the maintenance if you didn't want to pay the child care on top

Is that what you mean?

I have explained that my payments will now be made in line with the recommendation from the CSA calculator. Legally as far as i know at the moment my maintenance payments should be used towards our daughters childcare, food, clothing etc.

The money you pay should be used towards the child's food, clothing, heating, water, gas, child care etc

What the non resident parent actually does with it is sometimes another matter

Thanks Huxley - I think she is realizing that living at home with her parents and ordering from the next catalogue on a weekly basis doesn't pay for childcare.

Hi Barty9

Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will provide some information that may help answer your query around child maintenance and childcare costs.

Child maintenance is a contribution towards the cost of bringing up a child and this includes not only such items as food and clothing but also it is a contribution towards the home that the child lives in and the associated costs of running that home. You can find more information about child maintenance on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/maintenance/index.asp.

If you and your child’s mother have a family-based arrangement in place for child maintenance, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, both of you and your child’s mother have the freedom to decide what your contributions will include.

A family-based arrangement can include both money and other kinds of support, such as you directly paying for things that your child may need, or you contributing towards your child’s childcare costs. Family-based arrangements are not legally-binding, however, many parents prefer them because of their flexibility and ease of which they can be reviewed (such as if you or your child’s mother circumstances change). You can find more information on family-based arrangements on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/family/index.asp.

We have a range of tools and guides on our website that you can use to help keep your family-based arrangement amicable. These include our discussion guide which you can use to help plan your conversation around child maintenance. We also have a family-based arrangement form, which is not a legally-binding document, but if both of you write down what you have agreed, it can help to formalise your arrangement.

To give you an indication of how much child maintenance that may be calculated if you were to use the Child Maintenance Service, we have an online calculator on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/. Some parents use the figure provided when negotiating child maintenance for their family-based arrangement.

If you and your child’s mother have set up child maintenance via the courts (a Consent Order or Minute of Agreement, if you live in Scotland), you will need to review the terms and conditions of your arrangement to clarify what your child maintenance contributions will include. To do this, you may wish to seek legal advice.

For more information on the ways to set up child maintenance, please visit our website at http://www.cmoptions.org. Alternatively, you can call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on a Saturday. We 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