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Advice please ?
My ex wife and I have been divorced for 5 years now. After the divorce we both decided to have a ''family based arrangement '' for our 11 year old son. One week with myself and one week with the ex. His school was nearer to me so it was easy for us.
He has now left school age 16 and a half and he is going to college in Sept. The college is a little nearer to the ex wife but he can still get to it from where I live.
The ex wife has now ''decided'' that he will live with her full time. She has contacted the CSA ( without informing me ) and now they are demanding payments. I feel she has ''engineered '' this whole situation just for her own financial gain!
How do I stand here legally ? I have explained this to them but they are not interested The ex is manipulative and has persuaded him to stay.
He is my son and i want to look after him but the payments are quite severe as to what I was paying for his own meals and necessities.
Have i got a case ?
Whilst I sympathise with your situation, without a Contact Order she can change arrangements I'm afraid...even had there been a Contact Order in place, at 16 he is now able to choose who he lives with and if he has decided that he wishes to stay full time with his mother then he has the right to do so.
Unless you can talk your son round then theres not a lot you can do. If you can negotiate say weekends where he stays overnight with you for two nights you would be entitled to a reduction of 2/7ths of the weekly amount you are liable for.
The amount will be a percentage of his salary ruby. If you want to know how this is calculated you can google the CSA calculator, input your details and you will be given an estimated amount .
Hi Ruby,
Sorry for the delay. Yes I will have to pay 15% of my net income. Also in the last 3 months I have been working an extra 20 hours per month overtime, the CSA contacted me and I had to give them my basic gross and overtime payments for the last 2 months and also my net take home etc etc .
I explained to them that the overtime has now ceased. Their reaction . Tough.... Not interested .... So... I am now paying my ex wife a lot more than what I expected. Even if I lost my job the debt would still be there.
I also questioned the fact '' when will the payments cease'' ? Their reply was '' when the child benefit stops. '' This could be up until my son is 20 years old ( providing he is in full time education ) .. Another farce , 18 is adult or am I missing the point ? So between the age of 18 - 20 the parent can still claim child benefit ?
.Don't you just love the ''System'' . !!
Hello andytech0
Thank you for your post. I am William, the Child Maintenance Options consultant.
Child maintenance and contact are not linked in law. Therefore, difficulties over one should not disrupt arrangements for the other. If you would like to discuss your concerns about your ex-wife changing your contact arrangements, you may wish to get in touch with National Family Mediation as they are experts in this area. You can find their contact details at www.nfm.org.uk.
Alternatively, if you would like to find out what your legal rights are with regards to contact with your son you may wish to seek legal advice. You can find contact details for a solicitor in your local area at http://find-legal-advice.justice.gov.uk/.
You mentioned that when you divorced you and your ex-wife agreed to have a family-based arrangement in place. This kind of arrangement is about you and your ex-wife being able to decide together who will provide what for your son. If this breaks down you would both need to discuss any issues to try and get your arrangement back on track. However, a family-based arrangement is not legally binding, so if you or your ex-wife cannot renegotiate your arrangement, either of you could apply to the Child Support Agency (CSA) which you say your ex-wife has done.
If you are able to discuss child maintenance with your ex-wife it may be possible for you to get your family-based arrangement back on track. To help you to reach an agreement, we have some useful tools on our website such as a discussion guide, which can help you to plan your discussion with your ex-wife. We also have a Talking about money guide which may be able to help you to make an agreement with your ex-wife and work out how much financial support your son needs.
To help you maintain your family-based arrangement we have a family-based arrangement form, which is not a legally enforceable document but may put your agreement on a more formal basis. If you feel any of our guides will help you, they are easy to print from our website at http://www.cmoptions.org. If you can renegotiate and your ex-wife made the application to the CSA, she can cancel this at anytime by contacting them directly.
You said that your payments calculated by the CSA are quite severe. To give you an indication of how the CSA may have worked out your child maintenance, there is an online calculator on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/calculator.asp. If you have got any further questions about this, you may wish to contact them directly. You can find their contact details and information about how they work out child maintenance online at https://www.gov.uk/childmaintenance.
We have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful, it offers help and support to separated families. You can find this at http://www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation.
If you would like to talk to our team in complete confidence about child maintenance you could give us a ring on 0800 988 0988. We also have some other useful tools on our website to help support separated parents.
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