[Solved] The Mother owns a property..

Hi and welcome

I'm afraid that the CMS do not consider anything other than your income - your ex's assets are completely irrelevant to their calculations - though there should be a reduction of 2/7ths if she is staying over for between 104 and 156 nights per year.

Hi Headscraper

Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I would like to provide you with some information about how child maintenance is calculated along Government guidelines, as well as explain the choices you have for putting in place an arrangement that works for your family.

As you may have noticed when you used the online calculator, child maintenance calculated on the Child Maintenance Service (the Government statutory maintenance service) guidelines is worked out as a percentage of your gross income (income before Income Tax and National Insurance are taken off, but after occupational or personal pension scheme contributions are taken away) - this is to ensure that payments are affordable. In most cases the gross income figure comes from information given to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) by you, your employer or a third-party such as an accountant. As actd mentioned, they do not take your daughter’s mum’s income in to consideration. There are many other financial factors that may be taken into account by the Child Maintenance Service when calculating child maintenance. I have listed some of these factors below:
• The number of children that child maintenance will be paid for
• The number of nights a year, on average, you (the paying parent) have care of your daughter
• The number of other children you (the paying parent) support that live with you
• If you (the paying parent) receives any benefits

You can find more information about the Child Maintenance Service and how they calculate 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.

If you and your daughter’s mum put in place a family-based arrangement you do not have to follow the guidelines set out by the Child Maintenance Service, as these kinds of arrangements are flexible and can be whatever you and your daughter’s mum agree on. Your arrangement does not only have to be about money, if you both agree it can include other kinds of support, such as providing clothes, shoes or other things that your daughter needs. Although family-based arrangements are not legally binding, a lot of families feel that they work better and last longer than the alternatives. You mentioned that you have already explored discussing child maintenance with your daughter’s mum and wondered if there is any alternative options. A family-based arrangement can be arranged in whichever way is best for your circumstances, either without involving others or it can sometimes be useful to ask family, friends or even a professional mediator to help you negotiate. You can find more information about negotiating through a third party in our guide called Managing conflict with your child’s other parent. You can view this and our other guides on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/toolbox/leaflets.asp.

We have some tools on our website that can help with negotiating a family-based arrangement. You may also find our Talking about money guide and discussion guide useful as they can be helpful with planning your conversation, as well as help you consider what you would like to include in your arrangement.

Some families find it helpful to make a written record of their arrangement once they have agreed the terms of it. With our family-based arrangement form, you can record the details of your arrangement and both sign it as a commitment to it. Although the form will not make your arrangement legally binding, feedback we have received from other families is that it makes the arrangement feel a little more formal and therefore more likely to be kept to. You can view all of our tools on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/toolbox/index.asp.

If you find you cannot reach a family-based arrangement you may wish to consider making an application to the Child Maintenance Service. With their Direct Pay scheme they will calculate the maintenance for you and then you and the other parent decide how and when the payments should be made together. Direct Pay is legally binding, however, the Child Maintenance Service will not contact either of you again unless they are notified of any problems with payments or any changes to circumstances.

Something to consider when thinking about making an application is that there is an application fee of £20 that is paid by the parent who makes the application.

The Child Maintenance Service also have a Collect and Pay scheme. This is where they calculate, collect and pass on the payments for you. In addition to the application fee of £20 the Child Maintenance Service will start applying collection fees later in the summer too for Collect and Pay arrangements. They plan to charge collection fees to both paying and receiving parents for collecting and passing on child maintenance payments. This will mean that if you use the Collect and Pay scheme you will have to pay 20% in addition to the weekly maintenance and your daughter’s mum will have 4% taken away from the weekly maintenance.

The Child Maintenance Service also apply an enforcement charge for enforcement action where payments are not made in full or on time. The best way to avoid charges altogether is set up a family-based arrangement and not use the Child Maintenance Service at all. However, if you find that is not possible, there will be no collection fees with Direct Pay arrangements, only the application fee.

If you decide to apply to the Child Maintenance Service your responsibility to pay starts from around when you contact them or they contact you.

You can contact us by telephone or email for the reference number you will need in order to make your application if you decide to ask the Child Maintenance Service to arrange your child maintenance for you. This number is personal to you and shows that you have spoken to Child Maintenance Options before applying for a statutory child maintenance arrangement.

The alternative to your family-based arrangement and the Child Maintenance Service is to arrange maintenance using the legal system. This is known as a Consent Order in England and Wales or a Minute of Agreement in Scotland. These types of arrangements are usually included as part of separation/divorce or division of assets. You can negotiate through a solicitor/lawyer or mediator and then the arrangement is made legally binding through the courts. Once in place it can be enforced by your local Magistrates’ court if it is not adhered to. Something to consider with this option is that there may be legal fees involved.

You will find information about the choices that I have explained regarding how you can arrange child maintenance in our guide Information for parents living apart from their child.

From what you have written it sounds as though you are worried about the fact that you are falling in to debt. If you need support with your finances, you may find the Money and benefits section of our Practical support for separating parents guide helpful. It can be a useful starting point in dealing with a range of separation issues. You will also find a list of organisations that can offer advice regarding finances and debt in the back of the guide. I have provided details of some of these organisations below.

Money Advice Service. They give impartial information and guidance about your money to help you work out what is right for you. Their website ( http://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk) includes a comprehensive range of step-to-step guides to help you with money decisions and information on a wide range of financial products and services.

National Debtline’s specialist advisers offer free confidential advice and support on dealing with personal debt. You can find more information about them and their contact details on their website at http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk.

Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) provide free information and advice on topics such as legal, housing and debt. Their website address is: http://www.adviceguide.org.uk. If you have any concerns with your mortgage payments you could contact your mortgage provider to see how they can help.

The Department for Work and Pensions have a web application ‘sorting out separation’. It offers help and support to separating and separated families. It has a section on Money and Finance that you may find helpful. The link is: www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation.

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.

Regards

William

Thanks for the replies,

I think my problems seems to be more caused by the cost o living/property rental in the South East.
I will contact the debt advice helplines. But you would think it is logical to take both parents financial situation in to account because a parent crippled by debt can very quickly becomes an unhappy parent to be around.
When couples are living together they take both their incomes in to account when doing the household finances so why should this change when they split?