Brief background :- I have a rental property that I let out and have only just started receiving an income from. I offset that new income stream with additional conributions to my pension, such that my overall taxable income from salary and rental income remains the same (and thus so would my CM liability). I also have money invested in ISAs for the sole purpose of paying off the interest-only mortgage on the rental property.
I have just lost an appeal against two variations - one for unresonable diversion of income in regard to my additional pension contribuitions, and one for an asset variation on this ISA money that was intended for paying down the mortgage on my rental property.
Regarding my additional pension contributions, there are entirely legitimate reasons for doing this. One is tax planning, as I would otherwise be taxed at the higher rate of income tax, and another is retirement planning, as I have in the past been a freelance contractor often with little or no pension provision hence I am 'catching up' in the run-up to my retirement. The level of contributions are also deemed acceptable by the provisions of the CMS' own Decision Maker's Guide (specifically para 36020). Refer sticky for that. Also as I have said above there is insignificant impact of my actual taxable income that is used for the CM assessment. However the CMS - and now the HMCTS tribunal - have ruled that this amounts to 'unreasonable' diversion of income. It is almost as if their expectation is that I structure my finances specifically so as to maximise my CM liability, ignoring other legitimate concerns, and if I don't then I am intentionally 'reducing' what my CM liability would have been.
Regarding my ISA funds that have been assessed, they are in fact for repaying my mortgage and I argued that if I had chosen a repayment mortgage instead of an interest-only one then these funds would not even exist to be assessed. I.e. why should a simple choice on how best to repay my mortgage have such a profound (or indeed any) impact on my CM liability ? However I cannot actually prove that this is what that money is for and the decision has been to assess this money in a notional income calculation.
So it just seems that wherever there is any kind of judgement call or any lack of proof then the judgement goes against the NRP. I am just dumbfounded that such bias exists, it just seems extremely unfair to me.
To top it off - although I know this is irrelevant in 'rules' terms - when we were separating I offered my ex- to pay 50% of ALL childcare costs. However to my dismay she rejected this and went the CMS route. She was actually a senior manager in the CMS for decades so she knew how it all worked. She also knew precisely what financial assets I had because she went through my private papers taking photos of all my statements etc. All this is of course irrelevant to the CMS and HMCTS.