[Solved] Maintenance When Your Spouse Earns More

Hi There,

As it stands you are required to pay CSA no matter what your ex earns, this will be a percentage of your weekly take home pay, less 50% as you have boys 50% of the time.

Though that said that is the only amount you are required by law to pay, the money you pay is for anything the boys need, so includes child care and clothes, so effectively you don't "have" to pay the additional money that you are, you can by choice pay this and it's good that you already do, but there is no legal requirement to do this.

GTTS

Are you currently paying via the CSA, or is it a private agreement?

If it's by private arrangement, then there is nothing forcing you to pay that amount, and you can apply to the CMS. As far as I know (and someone posted about this in the last couple of days), if it's truly shared care, then maintenance is not payable (she'll still get child benefit though) under the new rules - you have to be able to show that there is shared care, and your ex may suddenly decide that she'll cut contact to prevent this, so you have to be aware of this possibility.

Just found the post - worth a read in your case: http://www.dad.info/forum/child-maintenance/36289-shared-custody-50-50?start=12#46408

Thanks for the information guys.

It is completely shared care (with me contributing more to the purchase of clothes and so on to be honest.) I have been keeping receipts of everything I pay for (including after school care, clubs and clothing)

Hi Barri

Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will provide some information that may help answer your query.

If you wanted to use the statutory rules child maintenance, then shared care is taken into account in different ways depending on the paying parent’s child maintenance rate. Shared care applies if the paying parent provides overnight care for at least 52 nights per year before a liability will be reduced. This is based on the agreement with the receiving parent and or evidence provided. Shared care is usually determined over a twelve month basis, but shorter periods can be considered in appropriate cases. However, if the paying parent can prove that they carry out an equal amount of day-to-day care as well as having equal shared care then the Child Maintenance Service regards neither parent to be the paying parent so their child maintenance would be set as nil, even if one parent receives Child Benefit for the child or children that maintenance is to be paid for. In addition, the receiving parent’s income is not taken into account when working out child maintenance You can find more information on how the Child Maintenance Service work out child maintenance on Gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-worked-out/how-the-child-maintenance-service-works-out-child-maintenance.

However, if you have a family-based arrangement in place with your wife, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, both you and your wife have the freedom to decide the terms of your own arrangement.

A family-based arrangement can include money and other kinds of support, such as the paying parent directly paying for things that a child may need. Although family-based arrangements are not legally-binding, many parents prefer them because of their flexibility and the ease of which they can be reviewed, such as if you or your wife’s circumstances change. You can find more information on family-based arrangements on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/family/index.asp.

To help keep your family-based arrangement amicable, we have a range of tools and guides on our website ( http://www.cmoptions.org/en/toolbox/index.asp). These tools include our discussion guide which you can use to help prioritise the issues that you may wish to resolve with your wife and help you plan conversations around child maintenance. We also have a family-based arrangement form that is not a legally-binding document, but if used to write down what both of you have agreed, it can help to formalise your arrangement.

To give you an indication of how much child maintenance that may be calculated if you were to use the Child Maintenance Service, we have an online calculator on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/. Some parents use the figure provided when negotiating child maintenance for their family-based arrangement.

For more information on the ways to set up child maintenance, please visit our website at http://www.cmoptions.org. Alternatively, you can call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on a Saturday. We 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.

Regards

William