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Hey All,
New member here and after a bit of advice!
I have two daughters with two different mums. For the last few years, we've always sorted out maintenance privately and gone off the figures on the calculator with no problems. We've contributed extra to school uniforms, holidays, dance classes, etc. Aside from this, I have my daughters every weekend - so pick them up on Friday nights after work, and take them back on Sunday nights.
Now, one of the mums is starting to be a bit tricky (I'll go into the reasons why in a second), the other mum is completely fine, understands the situation and is pretty laid back about everything - she has no problems with the current arrangement.
For the last 5 years, I've had a great career in IT. Had yearly pay raises and ended up earning around 60k in my last job. So they were both used to getting roughly £300 a month each from me (funny how they never had any issues when I was self-declaring pay raises and bumping the maintenance up btw).
At the start of this year, I was working in a toxic company, and I'd had enough (plus the possibilities of redundancy were also on the cards) - so I took the plunge and went self-employed - and created my own LTD company.
This didn't start to earn me much money overnight, and the year has been tough. Atm, I'm still only paying myself a director salary (approx £870 a month), and not taking dividends because we're not making a profit on the P/L Sheet (have some staff we pay for, accountant fees, hardware/software fees etc etc).
Life is a struggle with money atm, but I know it will get better - persistence.
Anyway, she's threatening to open a case with CM, because she's not happy with the £60 a month I'm giving her (£120 in total across both mums). Either demand it early (which I can't do as customers don't pay their invoices until the 1st of each month, then it clears around 5th) or complains that its nowhere near the amount she's been accustomed to.
After our bills (Rent, Water, Council Tax etc), I'm not left with much of that £870 left. So struggle with fuel to even get the kids, but somehow still make it work.
She also doesn't seem to fathom that I'm paying her more than the calculator states I should (£49), I help with uniform, don't complain about travel and do all the driving (as she doesn't drive).
Clearly want to avoid CM because of all the horror stories I've seen - like worried they'll use last year's earnings at 60k, rather than this year's to make a calculation etc.
Where do I stand? Any advice? What about CM fee's and travel costs (its a 72 mile journey just to pick one daughter up - Friday = 36 mile round trip / Sunday = 36 mile round trip).
Stressed!
hi,
if CMS case is opened, then they will use last tax year income, if its 60k then thats that they use. then you can contact them and tell them you have LTD company. but if if you haven't submitted accounts for the year, then CMS will likely not take interest in it, and they will detect those earnings when you submit annual accounts to HMRC. you should tell them you no longer have that job and now LTD.
you can claim travel expenses from CMS for child contact, but will be very minimal, and your expense needs to be minimum of £10 a week and above.
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