Paying maintenance when you have one child 50/50 and don’t see the other at all

hi,

just to clarify, the arrears you owe, this is for the 50/50 account they closed? if so one thing you can try is contact your ex and ask if she is willing to have those arrears wiped so you stop paying them. if she informs CMS then they should wipe off those arrears.  You could inform CMS that you have another child that you support, and in theory they should lower your maintenance.

also generally they have a rule where they can spread out your arrears payments over a 2 year period. Recently came across a case where a dad arranged to spread the arrears payments with CMS, and it works out it he will be paying those arrears off over a 7 year period, so pays very minimal amount of arrears per month. I would recommend this support group for paying parents. lot of experienced members there: 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/239699060076601

@flint1812

I am a little confused by your numbers.

In an 'vanilla' scenario just to make the maths easier (i.e. without any shared care adjustments etc.), CMS say that for one child you should be paying 12% of your salary in maintenance, and for two children you should be paying 16%. Where those two children are from different mothers, you then spread that 16% across both mothers - i.e. pay 8% of your salary to each.

So when one of those children drops out of the CM case - let's call it Child 1, according to the rule above you should from that point be paying 12% to the mother of the child that remains in a CM case, Child 2, i.e. your payments to her should go up from 8% to 12%, - and nothing to the mother of the Child 1, i.e. your payments to her should go from 8% to nothing.

Where there was a delay in applying this recalculation, then technically you have overpaid to mother of Child 1 (if you carried on paying the 8% to her), and you are in arrears in respect of Child 2. I don't know what the CMS do about repayment back to you of any overpayment to the mother of Child 1, but in respect of the arrears due to the mother of Child 2 the CMS are able to 'spread out' repayment of this arrears by applying a surcharge to amount you normally would have to pay (i.e. the 12% of salary figure).

However - you say that 12% of your earnings = £196 / month.

That tells me that you should currently be paying less than this to the mother of Child 2 as that payment should only be 8% of your earnings. However you say you are currently paying £277 / month. This is what I don't understand about your numbers.

Note that the 12% and 16% applies to your gross income - i.e. before any tax / NI has been deducted - and not to your net income, i.e. what you actually get paid by your employer each month after they have taken tax / NI off.

ANYWAY - back to your actual question about whether the fact you still have Child 1 living with you should impact the calculation of the CM payable for Child 2 - yes I think it should impact the calculation. In my case one of my two children lived exclusively with her mother, whilst the other one lived 50/50 with both Mum and Dad. My ex- tried to only include the child that lived with her in the CM case, but when I told CMS about the other child, that was relevant to them and they had to incorporate that fact in the CM calculation. As it happened in my case it ended up with both kids being in the CM case. 

This probably isn't relevant but in my case one of my two children lived 50/50 with me and Mum, whilst the other one lived just with Mum.

So I had 2 kids so share of my income calculated was 16%. However I have one child as 50/50 shared care and one 100% with Mum, so my 50% shared care discount was applied to just one of my two children - or half the 16%, so that's a 4% discount for 50/50 shared care for one child and I ended up paying 12% in total.

Then my son - who lived 50/50 with me and his Mum - went to Uni and dropped out of the CM case. That meant that I was then required to pay 12% of gross salary in respect of the one remaining child.

So one child drops out and I still have to pay the same amount of CM. In fact there is some provision that if paying for one child only an extra £7 is added, so I had to pay more for one child than I did for two children. An example of why the CMS is a mess.

Posted by: @flint1812

↑

Hi just after some advice.

I recently had one account closed for my son who I have 50/50 custody for . I have another son with another ex partner who I am denied access to completely and I pay maintenance directly to his mother . However , we are not in contact . 

After my account with my ex partner closed they have stated that I should now pay 12% of my earnings to my other ex partner and as it took them 2 years to close my 50:50 account I owe 4% of arrears for those two years . 12% of my earnings is £196 a month . I am already paying £277 a month to her and they want me to pay £318 . I just simply can’t do this , it’s basically a whole weeks wages . 

my question is should they take the fact that I have 50/50 custody of my other son into account as I technically have a child living with me ? They’ve made no allowances for this . 

Thanks 

The children you have 50/50 should be included or they are going against the very principle of the child support act 1991 (see section 2) welfare of children, the general principal.

why should a child be financially punished for choosing to live half with his father (section 28E also clarifies this general principle further and is worth taking notice of)

Section 3 & 5 highlight how there can be more than one parent with care for each qualifying child.

section 42 talks about and defines special cases (of which yours is one of) and highlights that the general rules/calculations need to be modified, or some rules do not apply at all in order to make fair decisions/calculations when the standard rules don’t apply or cover the specific situation.

these are the sections you need to make your arguments based on in order to force them to change their calculations to be fair for every child that is affected by their decisions.

also look at section 50 and 52 of the ‘child support maintenance calculation regulations 2012’ as this will help your cause too…

happy reading and good luck in your quest for fairness and equality, unfortunately, you will need it