[Solved] what do CSA payment cover ??

Hi mart,

There's a sticky that you'll find at the top of the Child Maintenance section called "How does the CSA calculate payments". It links to an informative CSA leaflet.

Your CSA payments cover all expenses and you are not liable to pay any extra. You are also entitled to reductions if the children stay overnight with you.

oh thank u !!

yeah i do have them every fortnight !! .... plus i travel around 80 miles (all in all) to have them and take them back ..... coz i also understand i came clam for traveling too .....but i ain't that petty !!

there is just no pleasing ex's is there !!!! 👿

thanks for repling !!

Have you googled the CSA calculator to check that you're paying the right amount? 🙂

Hi Mart

Thank you for your post, I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. If you have a family-based arrangement in place with your ex-partner, you may wish to try to discuss and negotiate what is included when calculating your child maintenance payments. Family-based arrangements are not legally binding and there is no one to enforce payments if they are missed. With a family-based arrangement there are no strict rules or formulas to follow, they can be flexible to suit the needs of both parents and their children. They do not have to be just about exchanging money, you could include within your family-based arrangement paying for school uniforms and travel costs.

If you have a case with the Child Support Agency (CSA), you may wish to speak to them in regards to your payments. The CSA works out child maintenance using the paying parent's income, which includes earnings, money from an occupational or personal pension and tax credits. They use the amount of income left after deductions such as Income Tax, National Insurance and any money paid into a personal pension scheme.

Child maintenance is a contribution towards the cost of bringing up a child and this includes not only such items as food and clothing but also it is a contribution towards the home that the child lives in and the associated costs of running that home. With a statutory child maintenance arrangement, you have to pay the amount calculated by the CSA. You can of course buy specific things for your children, but they will need to be in addition to your regular payments and they will not count towards your statutory child maintenance payments.

If you would like an idea how much child maintenance you may receive if you were to make an application via the CSA, you can use our online calculator. This is on our website at www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator. You may want to use this figure for negotiations to help you with your family-based arrangement.

We have a sorting out separation web-app on our website at http://www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation that you may find useful as it offers help and support to separated families.

If you would like to talk to our team in complete confidence about child maintenance you could give us a ring on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on Saturday. Alternatively, for useful tools and guides, you can visit our website at http://www.cmoptions.org.

William

The sticky you refer to, i can't find. I'm having the problem of being asked for half of this and half of that, when i already pay. I would like to be able to present to my daughter's mum that state in black or white what CSA covers. Can you help?

From the front page, if you click on the child maintenance section it will bring this section that you posted this on up. At the very top highlighted in orange are the stickys and its the third one down. There are two links there, click on the top one as that's working and it still applies....the second link which is for the new system which is being phased in, I've just clicked on it to check and the page is down at the moment and is saying to try again later. In the mean time this might help....

www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-worked-out/overview

Thank you for responding. The information details how maintenance is calculated, which I am aware of and fully understand. What I am looking for is somewhere that says what exactly child maintenance is supposed to cover. Many forums state that it should cover school trips, dinner, uniforms etc. Which I think is a reasonable assumption. However I can find nothing in black and white to substantiate this. My daughter's mothers stance on this is we should go halves on everything and the maintenance I pay is purely to put a roof over her head and food in her belly. I would have no problem contributing to a skiing trip. But I think my maintenance should cover a £10 trip to the theatre.

The legal definition of child maintenance is that it should be a contribution to the PWC's household: Parent with care.

The Child Support Legislation governs the level of child maintenance that should be paid by a natural parent who is absent from the child's household (the non-residential parent) to the parent with care.

What you are paying via the csa is what is legally required , YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY ANY MORE . Unless you want to, she has no legal right to ask you, what ever she gets is put in the pot and she provides for the children, that means every thing.
Now if it means your child cant go on a trip etc I think it would be fair in contributing to this cost

I agree. As I said I would glad help fund a trip skiing etc. and I've bought helf her uniform etc. In fact I more than contribute my share. I just think there has to be a point when I stand up to her and say 'no'. It's getting to the point where she expects me to contribute half to everything. Thanks for your help.

Hi - I am in the same position, just want clarification on what payments should cover. Despite paying the majority of private school fees, equal share of shoes, clothes, food etc, full payment of joint loan, I am still required to pay £300+ per month by the CMS (Band C). As I am legally obliged only to pay CMS costs, what about the costs of buying new uniforms, school shoes, trainers etc. Also, if the kids need new bed linen or dressing gown (for example) at my house, can I request her to pay?

Hi - I am in the same position, just want clarification on what payments should cover. Despite paying the majority of private school fees, equal share of shoes, clothes, food etc, full payment of joint loan, I am still required to pay £300+ per month by the CMS (Band C). As I am legally obliged only to pay CMS costs, what about the costs of buying new uniforms, school shoes, trainers etc. Also, if the kids need new bed linen or dressing gown (for example) at my house, can I request her to pay?

You can request it all you please but you'll never enforce it

Looks like this is quite widespread and not really helped by the lack of consistent information on the CMS website.
I have pretty much the same issue with my ex. I pay a significant amount of maintenence and have my son to stay 4 days/3 nights each week. I pay for everything when he is with me and he has a full set of clothes and anything else he needs at my house.
Unfortunately my ex takes the view that my maintenance should cover all costs for our son and i regularly get demands to pay for things which she considers "extra's". Just to reinforce the message that she expects me to pay she tells our son that i will be paying and gets him to ask on her behalf. Up until now I have ended up paying for these on top of the CMS payments whilst at the same time asking her not to involve our son in this. Its our discussion and should never involve him in my view.

Recently however her demands have started to get a little ridiculous so I put my foot down. I am still getting the abusive emails as a result of my refusal two weeks ago to her last demand for more money. I have tried and failed to help her see she is not doing herself or our son any favours by taking such a confrontational approach but it falls on deaf ears.

As a result I have had to take a more hardline approach. She gets the CMS payment. If she asks for a contribution rather than demands full payment to anything she considers extra I will consider it. If she demands or involves our son though I will refuse.

I have done a lot of research on this and honestly believe that openness and good communication is the key to ensuring you both put your childrens needs first and to that end I have suggested many times over the last couple of years that we sit down and negotiate a family agreement. I have no issue with paying more to her provided it benefits our son and my ex is contributing what she can. I do have an issue with her trying to blackmail me into regular unexpected and unagreed costs on top of the already substantial CMS pyments she recieves.

I have written a little flowchart (see attached) on how this works from a legal perspective if you are the Parent with care. I would never show this to her (she would explode) but it is where I expect us to get to eventually.

I think your approach is correct, though it can cause problems initially. The problem with CMS/CSA is that they simply don't have the resources to adjust individual claims and payments to take account of extra payments, which would be the ideal - if PWCs realise that by making extra demands, the maintenance would be cut by the same amount, then there would be no point in them making such demands, but unfortunately, it's just to much administration to consider this.

I would just like to throw in my 10 pence worth on this topic, as for my own sanity I decided to crunch some numbers to see how this maintenance payment works out in reality...

I have a 7 year old with my ex partner and I have him 3 nights a week and she has him 4.

On the assumption the the house costs when he is with us are equal between me, my wife and him these are the numbers I came up with.
Heat, light and water £ 428 again my sons share
Food £3,840
Clothes and footwear £ 600
Total £4,868

Splitting that based on the nights we have him my cost is £1,835 and hers is £3,033, so on that it looks as though it's pretty unfair, however when you then consider the maintenance payments I pay to her my costs increase to £3,335 and hers reduce to £1,533, oh how the tables have turned!

I would be interested to see what peoples thoughts are being able to see how this works in reality and what genius came up with these calculations. As always greed seems to rear its ugly head and the more you give the more they will take

Also this doesn't take into account the fact he has his own room and clothes at our house which we have brought over the years and holidays and treats etc!

Matty, have shared similar thoughts for a long time.

I have 2 kids (11 and 15yo) that i have for 5 nights a fortnight, so she has them 9/fortnight, which means on average in a month she has the kids for 9 days a month more than me.

I'll present my unfairness at the amount in two contrasting ways :

A. For those 9 extra days I have to pay £385/month, or about £43/day for the extra days she has them. If you take the opinion that she should pay the same amount as me for the kids that is then £86 per day that kids cost, This works out at £31,000+ a year costs for 2 children !!

B. Another way of looking at is I pay £385/month and she receives ~£180 child benefit. Meaning that before any of our expenses the kids cost me £385, but she profits by £565. In other words for this 9 days a month extra care that she has she is £950 better off than me. Sp with child benefit considered as well the kids cost well over £100 day !!

AS you said I would be very interested in knowing what genius came up with these figures for child maintenance and how? I see quite a bit written by people commissioned by DWP or other Gov organisations that criticise compliance, but don't see anything written about the mathematical inequality of calculations.