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Hi All,
OK, first please forgive me if this has been answered in several posts but it's hard to get all this in your head.
When I divorced (her choice ) over two years ago, the agreed maintenance was £750 per month and was for everything.(Two children under 18)
Since my son turned 18 and left full time education a year ago we agreed verbally to reduce this to £500 per month, however since then she has started to prevent me seeing my daughter, so I have the question below.
Can the maintenance now be adjusted to what the gov website calculates, this being £384 per month or do I need to go via the courts again?
She of course has not mentioned any reduction and I suspect she is preventing me seeing my daughter due to the fact that if I do not see my daughter she gets the maximum allowed payment as calculated on .gov.
I am sure you will have many questions but please just ask, I didn't want to swamp you with a lot of irrelevant info.
Thanks
Stephen
Hi there,
Contact and maintenance don't go hand in hand except where the number of nights the child stays over with the paying parent.
In your case though where you have been paying over what you should have been you can go to CMS and ask them to take the case over.
You don't need to go back to court, just contact CMS and open a case there is a fee to pay but it isn't much and you stand to save a lot more than that in the first month alone.
GTTS
Once a court order for maintenance has been in place for more than 12 months, either parent can open a claim with the CMS... this will override the previous court order.
As GTTS says, there is a £20 admin fee to open a claim with the CMS.
You could consider attempting mediation to try and get contact with your daughter back on track, but if your daughter is over 16 you wouldn’t be able to make an application to the family court for contact, if mediation failed.
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
All the best
Hello scarr
If you have a court order for child maintenance, you would need to go back to court to make any changes to your arrangement, unless the other parent agrees to these changes.
If you are no longer happy with your arrangement and you are unable to agree any changes between yourselves, you or the other parent would have the option of making an application with the Child Maintenance Service.
For more information on all the different ways to set up child maintenance and for a more personalised service, you can visit the Child Maintenance Options website at http://www.cmoptions.org.
The DWP have a sorting out separation website that you may find useful. It offers help and support to separating and separated families. The link is: https://www.sortingoutseparation.org.uk/.
Regards
William
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