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So after a long drawn out messy break up after finding out about an affair she was having I decided we could no longer workout it out.
Now comes the money side of things.
My partner is on double my hourly rate.
She wants CSA and half the nursery fees.
Which in effect is half of my wage a week.
She has the house(rented) but with every thing in.
I'm renting a room out at a friends.
I have my daughter for tea one night a week the the Friday tea and sat-return her sat tea.
Surely half my wage when she is on double my hourly rate is ridiculous?????
Any help please
Hi
You are only obliged to pay what the CMS calculator tells you, you don't have to pay anymore than that. Nursery fees or extras like that can be agreed between parents but you do not have to pay them.
Hello Mjr36
Child maintenance is calculated using the gross income of the paying parent minus any pension contributions and the income of the receiving parent is not taken into consideration at all when the calculation is carried out. What is taken into account is the weekly overnight stay you daughter is having with you and this does reduce the amount of maintenance you are required to pay.
As Yoda has already explained if you base your maintenance payments on the guidelines of the Child Maintenance Service then you would legally only be required to pay the calculated amount. Any other contributions that you do wish to make, such as help with nursery fees, would be done voluntarily by you if you wish.
You do have various options that you can consider to put a maintenance arrangement in place with your ex-partner and Child Maintenance Options can help and support you find the right option to suit your particular circumstances and they do have some supporting tools on their website at https://www.cmoptions.org that might help you both come to an agreement that you are both happy with.
Many parents do now choose to sort out their maintenance between themselves as it can be the quickest and easiest way of setting up a maintenance agreement and although family-based arrangements are not legally binding, they are very flexible and can be easily changed.
As you have no third party involvement with this type of agreement it really is up to the parents to decide what they would like to include in their agreement and if you do wish to incorporate the nursery fees for your daughter into your agreement, that is a possibility for you.
Parents have suggested that when they make a family-based arrangement it does tend to last longer as it is just an agreement made between the two of them and collaborating together with your ex-partner may also be better for your daughter.
If you feel like you would not be able to come to a family-based arrangement, you still have the option of using the Child Maintenance Service and they are the Government’s statutory maintenance service and can either calculate your child maintenance, then leave you to arrange payments between yourselves, or they can collect payments and pass them on for you.
If you do decide to ask the Child Maintenance Service to arrange your child maintenance for you in the future, your responsibility to pay will start from around the point that they contact your ex-partner after you have made the application. For further information about putting in place a statutory arrangement and the fees involved with this, you will need to contact Child Maintenance Options directly again and all of their contact details can be found at the on their website that I have mentioned above.
Another choice you have for arranging child maintenance is through the courts in the form of a Consent Order in England and Wales and Minute of Agreement in Scotland. This is an agreement where you and your ex-partner with the support of a solicitor would need to agree what to include then the agreement is presented in court and is ratified.
You may also be interested to know the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have a website, 'Sorting out Separation'. It aims to make it much easier for separating and separated parents (and childless couples) to find the support they need, when and where they need it, and encourages them to collaborate on a range of issues. The link is http://www.sortingoutseparation.org.uk/
For more information and for a more personalised service, you may wish to visit the Child Maintenance Options website yourself.
Regards
William
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