Angry about CM

Can you clarify where you are at with your CM application. Have you applied and its come back with a minimum amount? The next stage is to request both a mandatory reconsideration and a variation (because you dont believe his income is as stated). All they will do at this stage is look at the HMRC figures in more detail but this is the stage you have to go through.

Once you have done that which will likely come back with the same figures originally stated, then you can make a request to their Financial Investigation Unit who will then look into his finance in more detail. But you cant do this until you complete the above stages. Its in your and your childrens best interests to do this.

50/50

Not something I’d ever bluff about in case he said yes.

Not many mothers would be happy with 50/50. And there are countless threads by mothers desperately sad that their ex has 50/50

do you have children out of interest?

I'm so sorry op I was in the exact same position for years and yes men in this position get away with it over and over and over again. The CMS would do nothing and he had a nil award for years despite me sending proof of how much the house was he was renting how much he was paying to rent a luxury car etc. It's disgusting it happens but happen it does.

whatever the legalities are

head. Wall. Bang

Shame that posters have given detailed advice to the OP, waste of time.

Tell him it's such a shame you feel our child isn't worth contributing for. He/She deserves the world, they really do. It's sad you don't see their worth and are happy to let them go without.

Because that is the message sent when a parent doesn't financially support their own child. If it were up to them their child would starve and have nothing. Don't be afraid to be honest with people either that he doesn't want to contribute to his child and has better things to spend his money on.

OP, how is this 'really not important'? Are you sufficiently well off that this won't have a negative effect on your DC's lives?

I had a similar issue. Ex was paying £270 per month but was becoming more and more sporadic. After the new year I got annoyed so put a child maintenance claim in. Turns out as ex is self employed builder and hadn't put things through the books they worked out he owes the grand total of £7 per week ( despite me knowing he earns between £500-700 per week ). Wish I had never bothered putting the claim in now as he has never paid a penny since.

I'm going to say this one more time. Real slow.

The. Financial. Investigation. Unit. Are. The. Powers. That. Be.

My ex pretended he didn't live in the country.

CMS chimps went "dunno what to tell you really, we have to go on what he says"

HMRC went "dunno what to say really, he isn't filling in any tax returns"

I shouted at both agencies til I was blue in the face that I could send them a picture of him getting into his very English car, outside his very English house, in England, every day. But apparently that wasn't evidence.

I called my MP, as you can imagine, fuming.

She made one call. The FIU were involved. They froze his accounts. Went through every bit of income he had diverted. I now have a current CMS payment plan of £734 a month and arrears of £30k+ generated purely from the involvement of the FIU.

HMRC are still scratching their arses as to why he hasn't filled in a tax return.

OP, if you are still going to sit playing "baffled" what to do when so many have spelled out exactly what your options are, then there's little point of this thread.

Nothing can be done.

there you go OP, the answer you clearly want.

Is this the same OP who already made another thread on CMS?

You just need to follow the advice already given.
Read it then act on it!

It doesn’t matter whether anyone has been in the same position. I expect many women have, whether they have read your thread or not, who knows, but it doesn’t matter anyway.

I don’t understand what you mean by “Whatever HMRC sort out with him is irrelevant”.

The first step in all of this is getting to the bottom of the accounts, particularly how is he extracting money and how much money. HMRC will be very interested in this and if he is doing something incorrectly, then they will soon put him right. This will help greatly with your CM assessment.

I am an accountant of thirty years but I don’t know much about CM assessments, but somebody has mentioned a Financial Investigation. You need to get the ball rolling on this.

OP, there are really knowledgeable posters taking time to give you detailed advice. I appreciate it's complicated, but it's worth pursuing for your children since your ex-partner is being a dick.

OP, one more thing you could try on the CMS front (if you are on good terms with him) is just try to put it to him that going through CMS is not a threat or a weapon, just an admin tool to keep payments regular and impersonal. My ex took it very negatively when I offered to open the case if he would prefer not to share his payslips with me. I was genuinly trying to do a positive thing but he saw it as me presenting an ultimatum. Explain that you need regular payments so you can budget x,y,z FOR YOUR CHILD- surely as a business owner he can appreciate that and would not want to see little Betty going without. At least you can say you tried. Assuming it doesn;t work, please do go and get advice along the lines of what PP have suggested.

We have.

We've told you what to do.

You shrug it off and look for a different answer. There isn't one.

I too, can't work out why you started your thread if you aren't going to take the very basics on board or act on them.

What did you want from this thread OP - you've had posters giving you really helpful insight into how to proceed with CMS and you're just giving it Alan Partridge shrugs.

His payments were sporadic before, what on earth makes you think he'll come good now?

Whatever HMRC "sort out" with him, is what CMS calculate his maintenance on, so it's not irrelevant.

If he's hiding his income by either not declaring at all, or by diverting it through another person then you need CMS to do a variation.

He's got arsey and doesn't want you to go through CMS because he knows what he's given you historically is far less than what the CMS would have been, and will be going forward. Also he can't just tell them "you aren't getting anything this month". Well. He can, but then it gets added to his arrears balance so all he can do is postpone paying it. Where as you haven't got any personal jurisdiction over him, and he can just not pay a penny without any recourse. And he likes that.

Look into making a claim under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 (google it for a basic outline - some solicitors pages setting it out also offer initial free legal advice). You would argue his lifestyle is not consistent with his declared income.

If you can afford to instruct a solicitor to send a letter and suggesting mediation first, do so. It will show you are serious and if his finances are as dodgy as they sound he might come to a settlement before he has to disclose all his financial information to the Court.

If you take money from a company that’s a salary Op. this all sounds like bollocks. Unless he’s taking cash in hand? Which is also illegal.

The legalities are the important bit. If you don't want to pursue them then fine but they are there.

What do you mean literally nothing you can do? They've said the CMS have a financial investigation unit. Go to them