[Solved] Shared Care Reduction Rate is Inherently Unfair

If you follow your logic, if the child stays with you 2 nights, then you would be reducing maintenance by over half while having a care for just over a quarter of the time. On the current system, the PWC is getting 1/7th less and you are keeping 1/7th more, so the differential is 2/7th between in fact, for example, you have £700 left from your salary to pay child maintenance:

zero nights, you pay 700 per month, your ex receives 700 per month, so she has 700 more than you from your free money.
1 night, you pay 600, keep 100, your ex received 600, so she has 500 more than you, which is the 2/7th you are talking about possibly.

In terms of changing the way it's done, the simple answer is it isn't going to happen - CSA and CMS has been going for 0ver 20 years, and in that time, there have been 3 major changes (CSA1, CSA2 and CMS) , so changes take a long time to happen.

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I was struggling yesterday to word my isssue and I think sleeping on it has helped.

The entire point of child maintenance is to share the cost of bringing up your children. Let’s say that going by your example I pay £700 a month. This is to cover my share of the children’s cost, so it is assumed that the PWC is also paying some amount towards their care (let’s assume it’s the same amount of £700 for easy math). So the total cost of care for the children is £200 per seventh of the month. So it should extend that each seventh of the month they stay over with the other parent, the other parent should pay £200 less (2/7th)

Another way to put it is that under the current system the children’s care cost is shared while they are in the PWCs house but when they are in the other parents house the PWC does not share in the child care costs which seems inherently unfair.

I am suggesting that each night the other parent has them they should pay for them fully as is the current status quo, but I also suggest that the PWC should reciprocate and also match each night of fully paying for them and the rest the parents should share the cost for.

An important point here is that what I’m suggesting is a fair and linear scaling, the current system has a cliff edge when the balance of care tips and this creates a financial incentive for the PWC to limit the other parent’s contact with the children, as I said in the title, the current scaling is inherently unfair.

I’ll upload a two graphs later with the current system and my suggestion.

I don’t accept that just because something is longstanding it is correct and can’t be changed.

As promised, see chart attached, that cliff edge on the orange line at the tipping point of the balance of care creates a financial incentive to change contact with the child for financial gain, a linear relationship like the blue line removes this incentive and creates better equality in parenting, it also allows for a more granular approach if that was a route that suited the CMS.

I can see your point, and in fact the current system does allow for 2/7th for each day in one circumstance, and that's where there is 50/50 care, when the NRP doesn't pay maintenance. The disadvantage of what you suggest is that by working in 2/7th units, there is a much greater incentive for the PWC to fight any overnight stays - just 2 per week would mean that (s)he would lose over half of the mainntenance.

What might be a fairer system would be to continue to work in 1/7th units, but to take both parent's income into account (there are problems if one parent isn't working) and to work out a daily cost, which is then contributed to by booth parents in proportion to their income. If the parent with care can't earn as much because of day to day care of the child, then that would be allowed by the fact that the NRP can earn more. Incomes of spouses of either parent wouldn't be included.

However, as I said, the chances of changing this are remote since the CMS has only just started working with the new calculation.

Fair point about a change preventing the PWC from wanting overnight stays, but following the same logic and applying it to both PWC and NRP then currently the NRP would not want overnights as they are currently financially penalised for them. That isn't the case currently and I don't believe it would be the case if the change was made, there may be backlash initially but once it was the norm, people would just accept it and move on.

I like your idea, but I fear it's overly complicated and as you point out it may not work in all situations. The fact that there is an instance where the system accepts that 2/7th is correct only adds fuel to my fire that this is the reduction rate.

However, it's worth noting that your proposed system (reduce by 1/7th per night of total cost, considering both parties incomes) and more specifically the scenario where you said there would be a problem, presumably because its the worst case. In this scenario where the PWC wasn't earning, so contributes £0, the 1/7th reduction per night would be based solely on the NRPs income... which would be the CURRENT SYSTEM!!!

In the role reversal, NRP not contributing financially and PWC is. NRP should be legally required to provide care equal PWC's working hours - 50% of state sponsored care hours (school, nursery etc), content and timing of which at PWCs discretion with PWC also entitled to a veto.