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My wife unexpectly ended our marriage just before Christmas. I swapped my working pattern five years ago to school hours to care for the children and to support her new promotion. Since then, she has been promoted again to earn more than twice my salary. She earns £65k a year, I have just taken an early retirement package from work, which kicks in when I'm 55 in December. My lump sum and pension would have been worked out on my 80% working week.
She is 9 years younger, can afford a new three bedroom semi once the house is sold, I can't afford a property near my kids coz of house prices and my income.
My question is - if my soon to be ex-wife is the main carer, is her salary taken into account in my maintenance payments? Especially in light of me subsuming my career for hers?
In respect of child maintenance, if she is the main carer, then her income doesn't come into to the calculation, the CSA calculation is purely on your income and number of children, plus a few other facts such as travel costs, any existing debts etc. It's possibly you may get a slightly different figure in the divorce settlement, but after a year, the CSA will take priority over the courts, though the new rules come into force in 2014, and I think generally the courts base their calculations on the CSA figures anyway. If you can come to a family based arrangement, that may be fairer, but it's up to you and your ex to agree that.
Whether you could get a better proportion of the house in the divorce is something that's difficult to say, but if your ex is providing the home for the children, it's hard to see that happening.
Hello smooth2go
Thank you for your post. I am Sarah, the Child Maintenance Options consultant. You asked if your ex-wife's salary would be taken into account when calculating child maintenance if she was the main carer.
The Child Support Agency (CSA) works out child maintenance payments using a set formula, which would be based on your net weekly income. Other factors are taken into account but this would not include your ex-wife's salary.
Having said this, you do not have to arrange child maintenance through the CSA. If you can reach an agreement with your ex-wife, you can make a family-based arrangement. With this type of agreement you can both decide what counts as child maintenance. It can be a combination of financial assistance and contributing towards other things like clothes, school uniforms and even sharing the care of your children. A family-based arrangement is not legally binding but it gives you the flexibility to change your agreement as your children get older or yours or your ex-wife's circumstances change.
If you want some help planning your conversation or talking to your ex-wife about money, we have a "discussion guide" to help you. We also have a family-based arrangement form that can help put your agreement on a more formal basis and a maintenance calculator that can give you an indication of what may be payable using the CSA guidelines. You can find these on our website at www.cmoptions.org.
Should you find you cannot discuss a family-based arrangement with your ex-wife, you may wish to use the service of the CSA. They have two schemes available called Direct Pay and Collect and Pay. Direct Pay is where the CSA calculates child maintenance and then lets you and your ex-wife decide how payments will be made. Once they have calculated the maintenance amount, the CSA will not contact you or your ex-wife again unless your circumstances change or if they are told that payments have been missed.
The Collect and Pay service is where the CSA calculates, collects and enforces payments on your behalf, as some people prefer the security and help of third party involvement. If you decide to use the statutory maintenance service, then your responsibility to pay child maintenance will start from around the point you are contacted by the CSA. You can find the contact details and information about how they work out child maintenance online at http://www.gov.uk/childmaintenance.
If you feel that the CSA would not work for either of you, you can put in place a Consent Order, which is an official ruling made by a court. To arrange a Consent Order, both parents need to agree how much child maintenance will be paid and how often before going to court and there may be legal costs associated to this.
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.cmoptions.org/en/sortingoutseparation/index.asp.
To find out more about how Child Maintenance Options can help you visit: http://www.cmoptions.org. If you would prefer a friendly and confidential chat, please give the team a call on 0800 988 0988.
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