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CMS do not back date, its from the date of the application.
My advice would be to apply yourself soon
Remember, this is child maintainence not allimony
Cheers Twiston.
Looks like that's the way to go.
Hello Wilko
Thank you for your post. With regards to what you have mentioned about your wife taking assets from your property and money from your joint account, you may wish to seek legal advice to discuss your rights and concerns.
Concerning child maintenance, you still have a responsibility to make regular contributions towards your son's upbringing. As other forum members have mentioned, there are a number of ways that you can do this. One is for you and your wife to set up child maintenance privately via what we call a family-based arrangement. Even though this type of agreement is not legally-binding, it gives parents the freedom to decide exactly what the terms of their agreement will be, such has the payment methods that will be used, how much child maintenance that will be paid and the form that it will be paid in. This type of child maintenance also gives parents the flexibility to decide when their child maintenance will be reviewed.
If you are unable to set up a family-based arrangement, you can make an application to the Child Maintenance Service, the Government's new statutory service. Any child maintenance that is managed by them is legally-binding and enforceable.
The Child Maintenance Service will work out child maintenance and then either, leave it to parents to arrange payments between themselves or where applicable, they can collect payments from the paying parent and then forward child maintenance on to the receiving parent. The paying parent's responsibility to pay through a statutory arrangement begins from around the point when they are notified of the application.
An alternative to statutory child maintenance is for you and your wife to set up child maintenance via the courts in the form of a Consent Order or Minute of Agreement (for people that live in Scotland).
To discuss the ways that child maintenance can be arranged in further detail (including using the Child Maintenance Service and the charges that have been introduced), you may wish to contact Child Maintenance Options directly. Their contact details can be found on their website at http://www.cmoptions.org.
The DWP have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful. It offers help and support to separating and separated families. The link is: www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation.
Kind regards
William
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