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Hi, I'm 27 and enrolled full time at University and work part time earning around £120 a week, I don't receive any benefits or money for my son as I have been told this would affect the benefit his mother is already receiving. My son is 9 months and lives with his mother (20) who is employed around 8 hours a week at min wage and is in receipt of all benefits she is entitled to (I assume around £80 p/m solely for our son). She lives with her mother so has limited outgoing expenditures for the house.
I currently pay a couple of hundred when I have am able to as one off payments but would like to set up a standing order to pay towards costs of our son each week or month but as I am unclear of what she already receives I am not sure of how much to pay. She has told me the health adviser has said I should be paying £20-30 p/w would this be accurate?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Hi There,
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From a very quick calculation based on £120 being your gross weekly wage (before tax and NI) and assuming you don't have your son stay over with you at all you would pay £10 a week.
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If you look on the CMS calculator and fill in the details fully you will get a better calculation.
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https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-child-maintenance/y
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GTTS
Hi Dcope,
Thank you for your post. I will provide relevant information about child maintenance which will help to answer your query.
Child maintenance does not affect a person's entitlement to receive most benefits, however, it is the responsibility of the claimant to keep the Jobcentre informed of any child maintenance that they receive. If your son's mother receives local authority benefits (such as Housing Benefit or Council Tax Benefit), she will need to contact her local authority as some authorities take child maintenance into consideration when calculating entitlement.
One way that you can put regular child maintenance in place is to contact your son's mother and set up child maintenance directly with her via what is known as a family-based arrangement. As there is no court or statutory involvement in this type of arrangement and it is not legally-binding, both you and your son's mother can decide exactly what the terms of your agreement will be, such as how much child maintenance that will be paid and the form it will be paid in.
If you and your son's mother are unable to agree on a specific sum, you may wish to use the online child maintenance calculator that is listed on the Child Maintenance Options' website ( http://www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/). This is will give you an estimated payable amount of child maintenance based on the rules that the Child Maintenance Service use.
Should you find that you and your son's mother are unable to agree, you can make an application to the Child Maintenance Service, the Government's statutory service. Any child maintenance that is managed by them is legally-binding and enforceable. Your responsibility to pay with the Child Maintenance Service will begin from around the point when they contact you.
Any alternative to statutory child maintenance is for you and your son's mother to set up child maintenance via the courts, in the form of a Consent Order (for people living in England and Wales) or a Minute of Agreement (for people living in Scotland). For further information about setting up a court order for child maintenance, you will need to seek legal advice.
If you would like to have an impartial conversation about child maintenance, you may wish to contact Child Maintenance Options directly. Their contact details can be found 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.
Kind regards
William
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