Abolition of child benefit for higher rate taxpayers is an attack on women

VS

I agree with you.

My DH is very (now) generous with his salary, but I know not all partners are as helpful and we still have the 'MY money' comments and 'you're doing nothing' comments during rows as I'm a v. lucky SAHM (designated loser in the CB stakes)

I know some friends who have relied on CB during mat leave to get them thru as their OHs aren't as generous.

Divorce rate could also peak depending on circumstances - we'll have to shave our budget again (like the rest of the country - I know) when this comes in and I'll look for evening work when it comes in.

BUT if DH has a pay cut then we could lose the house, so would be better off (potentially) signing the house to him, getting a divorce and then me keeping the house on and renting it from him, plus I'd then get the CB back. So divorce rate could be affected by these cuts in a number of ways.

agree VS - I am sorry but the whole Eton thing starts to come into play here

How can someone POSSIBLY empathise with the masses when you come from that DEGREE of privilege???

He is clearly not superman...

VS infact if what you say IS true then Cameron will be a catalyst for family break up - exactly the opposite to his desired 'Married with 2.4'

GRRRRRRRR

HB, this is what makes me think that the camerons just haven't got a CLUE. They obviously have nOBODY in their circle of friends who has ever gone through anything like this (a seperation, or seperation from a financially abusive man).

I existed for a while on that tiny bit of CA, I stretched it so far. I think if it had ended up in my x's pocket, I would have just cried, lost the will to live, and left him sooner than I did! NO BAD thing THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN.

Actually VS that's a very good point.

I wondeer... I guess it depends on how many of the £44K+ families with 1 SAHP have joint bank accounts.

Oops - I meant 'how MANY families,' not 'namy'

Having thought about who will be affected by this for several days now, I think the torys have been exceedingly cunning.

A band of families with incomes over £50,000 but potentially below £88,000 will not be affected by any cuts (potentially) provided they are dual income families, under the top tax bracket - which IME many dual households are.

They are not ( I believe ) entitled to any of the WFTC or CTC and also will not lose their child benefit - it's ingenius in it's simplicity. A BIG swathe of middle England protected, potentially, from suffering any of the cuts.

It would be interesting to find out how namy families are out there like that - they could calculate the 1.5 million pissed of CB losing families, so they must be able to calculate this.

Families who will suffer the most from the CB cut are the LP HRT payers, and they won't have the choice for the child caring partner to return to work.

SAHPs may suffer more in the long run because of the potential loss of their pension credits...

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a peak in the divorce rate in about 6 months. Mothers will smell the coffee, the coffee that they were in denial about when they had a tiny bit of CA to rely on... that their partners are mean with money.

i TOTALLY agree with you OP.

I have been in the situation where I had to rely on that tiny bit of children's allowance even though my 'partner' arsehole was earning 90k.

The idea that if I was still with him (with the children) he'd be getting a tax break too, arghgh. I home that Womens Aid and womens' rights organisations are up in arms about this because women and children will suffer.

I am in the same position as BellsaRinging.

I am a working lone parent and earn just over the higher rate tax threshold. I will therefore lose my child benefit.

This policy is discriminatory against lone parents. It should be based on family income in the same way as tax credits.

The latest proposal to ensure stay at home mums don't lose out by giving a tax break though the reintroduction of married couples allowance makes is deeply flawed and again disadvantages lone parents.

jackstarbright I took your comment to mean that the tories think the only way men can be expected to financially support their own children, is to force them to live in the same house as them.

Which is of course, possible. I don't think that comes from their low opinion of men, I think it comes from a sense that men are entitled not to support their kids if they don't live with them.

I think you may be right about them having such a low opinion of people in general, that they believe they would stay in unhappy relationships for the sake of a few extra quid. If they re-introduce recognition of marriage in the tax system, I guess we'll find out if they're right...

mummiehunnie-thanks very much for that comment and you are of exactly the same mindset as I am and seem to know exactly where I am coming from. I have got a lovely grounded and hard working family who would rather die than ask for benefits and we have been through a real lot of trauma and come out the other side-still struggling financially but I held the family together through it all. We are still picking up the pieces and will be for years to come. We also live in fear of it happening again and costing even more. The man in question is ex police and private investigator, tracks us down no matter where and hides his own identity because he has learnt how with the jobs he had. He gives men and police a bad name but it still leaves us financially unstable. My family had to hide behind furniture every time they heard noise outside in case the windows went through on them. To actually want to keep child benefit, which was not meant to be a benefit for the badly off people but for helping families is not wrong of me. I have worked hard all my life and paid taxes for poorer people and I resent the fact that no one helps us at all despite hitting hard times ourselves and through no fault of our own but because of the way taxes and benefits work. Just because I don't work now, is not due to laziness but circumstances hmm

In response to the unpleasant comments regarding the lady in her second marriage with a large blended family that has the husband working and who is now tipped over the 44k... I find it tragic that she has been condemmed for having to have had to go to court re her abusive ex husband, i know only too well how much it costs to go through family courts, so understand the long term drain on your families finances through that. I can also understand why you do not want to work due to the difficulties your older children have no doubt as hangovers from family court and abuse etc. It makes me wonder if you were out at work and your children who have been hurt decided to go around acting antisocially, or got pregnant as a teen, or were steeling, vandalising etc, and costing the community and government far more than a bit of child benefit how they would feel then about you gonig to work. I don't buy this rubbish that they have to go to work, they go to work as they want to keep up with the jones often, not always and attack stay at home mum's like yourself for doing what you know is best for your children to feel secure after trauma in their lives and to keep them on the straight and narrrow and not want them to be a statistic, I applaud you, and would not begrudge someone who's family had been through trauma less than a hundred pounds a week if it meant that the health service, social benefits, police etc were kept less busy and you had happy healthy children!

HerB - Actually I'm not convinced that 'bribing' people to stay in failing relationships, with benefits or tax breaks works.

I'm just pointing out that the Tory party appear to believe it.

social policy marginalising women

And that's why the tories are keen on marriage is it, Jackstarbright? Because they think that the only way to get men to take financial responsibility for their own children, is to ensure that they stay living with the mothers of their children?

Hmm, interesting. You may be right, they do have a cynical streak like that.

Which begs the question of why they are choosing to financially support a family with a double income of £80K and not one with a single income of £45K, when the one with £80K would find it financially less daunting to sue for divorce.

Doesn't add up.

So fathers can only be expected to support their own flesh and blood if they are living with their children's mothers then jackstarbright?

I see.

HerB

"3/5 of non resident parents do not pay any maintenance .....What does that tell you?"

Why the Tories are so keen on rewarding marriage??

"As part of the reforms, the government will crack down on fathers who fail to support their offspring. ?We are going to be quite tough on that. People who father kids have an obligation to society to support them,? Duncan Smith said. "

So ye, they are talking about this too.

Well about fucking time too.

My ex should be paying 100% more than he currently is, the Australian government agree and will collect it via attachment of earnings, guess where the fly in the ointment is yes the British court order referred to on various CSA documentation doesn't actually exist.

Herbeatititude- well said. Also it is easy for people not in this position to condemn and say leave, seek refuge etc. They control you to a point that you loose all sense of reality and have already isolated you from everyone you know who may help. And then by the way, we would then cost the Government the money they are trying to save!! Help is not there for these people-anyone reading this who has been in this position will know what I mean. It is dangerous, it costs money-a lot of it- to get help, the free services are for support and do not really give you the help you need without going down another dark road-its really tough and all levels of society suffer it, not poor people or middle class etc, you don't just walk into this type of life and ask for abuse

Can I repeat the statistic here?

3/5 of non resident parents do not pay any maintenance.

3/5.

And the CSA has existed for 25 years.

What does that tell you?

lucky 1979 - i am sorry to say they have said this numerous times and it doesn't happen. You would not believe the battles I have had and still have today to get anywhere with this as they will not find anything out for you but expect you to know every last detail about an ex partner and fund private investigators to do it.Unless the kids pass information on, it is almost impossible to find out where hidden income comes from despite you knowing its happening. There is no back dating unless you were aware straight away of any shortfall or income hiding.Its just a mask to make people think they can get somewhere. Then there are the victims of violence,alcoholics,abusive ex partners that are too scared to do anything for fear of repercussions-then what??Nothing because the Mother ends up still with the child care and knows she should have support but also knows what ill happen if she tries so they are badly off. These are the tip of an iceberg type points that unravel peoples real hardships when it comes to finances.

I agree with Zepherine.

It's also politically astute because it (supposedly) target a group that could be identified as one the Tory's are (supposedly) fond of. So it acts as window-dressing for all the other, more genuinely revenue-generating, cuts that are sure to come.

It's the one that let's them point and say "We're all in this together". It's a little act of p.r. And as Zeph says, it's a small group, without a lot of general sympathy.

But it sucks, in many, many ways. A rise in tax, would have been fairer, clearer, raised more money .... oh, and widely unpopular.

I would so love this one to backfire, but I don't think it will. Even here on mn I see lots of division about who should be the target of all these cuts; it causes a lot of splintering. It's depressing.

In response to lady blahblah- very well put i think especially the bit about absent parents who don't pay, or hide earnings to pay less. It is them that make life for women very hard even if they are not single because the step father then ends up paying for kids that he inherited and probably has his own kids to pay maintenance for aswell. It is very hard for women to work with children especially with unflexible hours and also if they don't have the back up of parents/family that are still alive or healthy enough to help. It then becomes practically impossible. I have tried the lot-work for employer, work at night, get a paper round and self employed and apart from the fact you get some money every angle has a problem, when the kids are ill/days off unexpectedly and so on making you very un-employable. Despite a lot of comments on this website some of actually do like our kids no matter how much we have to give up for them in the way of life-style

Complimentary - the point I am trying to get across which i probably didn't do very well is, that we are hard working parents who have always provided for our kids-no matter how many we have-which is not necessarily everyones choice or cup of tea, but we have no benefits involved so I don't think that particular bit is anyone elses business. What I don't like is because we have always worked hard, got educated and brought our kids up to do the same we have actually been punished. We sail close to the wind financially but this is because our older children-who are not classed officially anymore as children because they reach 18- are officially expected to provide for themselves and we are finding it increasingly difficult to provide for them while they are being educated and hopefully in turn don't turn into scroungers. They also work part-time to pay for their clothes and dinners but at the end of the day we still house them and in turn have to cover the costs involved. I wouldn't have entertained being at home with my parents at their ages but times got tough and they don't stand a chance anymore without a lot of support. This is what we try and do for them and as I said it comes at a cost to us. I could abandon them at 18 like a lot of Fathers do when they stop the CSA money beause they think its for their ex and not supporting the kids. I could also send them as adults to the council to house at maybe a cost in housing benefit of 1200 pound between 4 of them a month.We don't, instead we intend to support them until they don't need it.They could do what their friends do and milk the benefit system but we have tried to avoid it so give us a break please and leave the only small child benefit we do get for our youngsters so that we can carry on supporting our "children". It obviously doesn't even end there, again its just a tip of the iceberg i'm afraid and as I said with the unfair treatment we have received in taxes, just because we have around 500 more than this wage supposedly coming into our house. It does not work like that because of the tax and also because by the time earners 500 less than this qualify for all the tax credits, free childcare and so on it means they are so much better off financially.Just stand in our school playground and talk to anyone to find this out!! I am very blessed however to have a lovely family, no matter how much we struggle and no matter how bitter these alleged lower wage earners seem to be they keep all their tax credits out of the arguments and when it comes to the whole income they talk about on here.

I'm not sure it is all that astute politically tbh.

One of the things that people, particularly women, hated about New Labour, was its insistence that the only value women had was in working outside the home. In its tax credits and benefit system, it really disadvantaged SAHMs. And the tories actually had the cheek to criticise them for it. New Labour never went as far as to take child benefit away from single income couples on £40K where one of them was a SAHP though, while leaving it intact for double income couples earning £80K. That seems to me to be a terrible political blunder and will incense the blue rinse crowd.