To not have realised that anyone earning over £26k will lose child benefit next year.

[bytheMoonlight]

I started this thread

And have discovered that anyone earning over £26k will lose all benefits inc. child benefit.

AIBU to think this has been massively underplayed in the media and many will not know this.

I'm not a sahp parent and it will be a kick in the teeth for me too - mine pays for exactly the same things as yours? I'm afraid I agree with Heswall, this has nothing to do with sah vs working.

There were some interesting stats discussed on Woman's Hour this week about how by making benefits means tested, fewer people access them (down to factors like stigma, the complexity of claiming). This is shown to be the case with Working Tax Credits. Ultimately this means that children who really need their families to have this extra income miss out.

I thought the case was that only families with one parent earning in the 40% tax bracket would lose child benefit. Everyone else still gets it.
The 26k is for ctc and only in some circumstances

Oh I am sorry but I do not believe people don't claim because of stimga these days at all. When I had my son the woman in the next bed was on the phone to TC to tell them "i've had me babeeee" I'm not sure the cord had stopped pulsating.

"I think it does include child benfit."

YABU and Huntycat has got the wrong end of the stick as usual.

' i quite happily helped myself from DH's salary for whatever i wanted.' ooh good for you, so everyone should think how you do end of

i would have been totally lost without CB, dp didn't earn much when my ds was born and we lived in london, it was a godsend.

So 50% tax payers lose it?

If you have no money of your own then you've two choices, get a job or ask the man you live with as husband and wife for some, the state shouldn't really come into it for exactly these reasons, the state is unreliable and quite regularly pulls the rug out from under you.

we're losing tax credits as we both earnt over 26 think thats what op means

Extract from the DWP Document on the proposed impact of Universal Credit

"For example, it will now be financially rewarding for a lone parent to work 15 hours per week, or 17 hours per week (both of which would not have been financially rewarded under the existing system which only recognised 16 hours per week); and should more hours be available, the extra earnings will no longer face a Marginal Deduction Rate of 96 per cent. Under the current system a lone parent working 16 hours at the National Minimum Wage would only increase their take home pay by £5 a week if they increased their hours to 25 hours. Under Universal Credit the same lone parent would increase their take home pay by £17."

i did have a job as well

child benefit has been around for years, for everyone so it's not unreasonable to take it into considertaion when having children, though my son is now 18 so i was talking about a while back!

shame i was taxed so much on my job, but i guess i chose to live in london and not marry for money

Well there you go then SE we aren't talking about the likes of you, you had money of your own so didn't rely on your DH so what actually is your point exactly ?

my point is that not everyone can help themselves to their husbands/partners money so easily

though i am guessing you will then say they shouldn't have kids then

Or find a new husband you does believe what is mine is yours, this could well show up some mens true colours in fact I know it will in several cases.

WHO not YOU

"I never understood the whole "it's my only source of money" from stay at home mums, i quite happily helped myself from DH's salary for whatever i wanted. Maybe CB has allowed some men to mistreat their wives financially and it'll show some men up when suddenly they have to give their wives some financial freedom and share because she hasn't got CB for coffees, shoes etc."

Heswall I grew up believing that the "Family Allowance" as it used to be called, now CB, was given to mothers in a family, no matter how much the father earned, so that if the woman had had the misfortune to be married to a high-earning drunk/abuser/gambler/arsehole/skinflint they had something to feed their children with. I don't think CB "allowed some men to mistreat their wives financially," it wasn't about men, it was about women and what women with small children need. I still feel it is desperately important that women have some money coming in when they are at their most vulnerable, when their DCs are tiny.

There was an excellent BMJ article HERE about how means testing benefits will help to destroy the welfare system by giving the more well off less reason to support it (in short, "I am paying in, but what am I getting back?")

Yes Ballon you are right but that was also back in the day when if you didn't work you didn't eat, women can now leave somebody who drinks away the family's food money and be a single parent.
Either you are in a good relationship with a man who isn't abusive or you aren't and you need to leave him. Child Benefit really doesn't come into it.

Yes I know you are right - the days when there was no women's aid and a husband could get away with giving his wife £5 a week housekeeping and beating her if the children looked scruffy or he didn't have meat with his tea, and she had nowhere to go, are gone thank God and Erin Pizzey.

And yet, and yet, I still feel deeply uneasy about the removal of this benefit.

*"I think it does include child benfit."

YABU and Huntycat has got the wrong end of the stick as usual.*

This. There is a great deal of hysteria and misinformation bandied around with regard to the changes in benefits, tax credits and so on. Which is a shame, because it is an important issue that needs discussing rationally.

I think it does include child benefit

No Op it most definitely doesnt - please research properly before you post something that could cause an awful lot of posters to panic.

I agree with Heswall. People forget how recently relatively that there was no help for women with kids in violent relationships. If your family refused to help you, and many did, CB could be crucial for women in an abusive relationship.

Now, although there are cuts to services, there are refuges, Women's Aid, help with housing fgrom the council, better police support, etc. I am not saying this support is perfect, its not. But the reasons CB was given to largely sahm with well off partners are imo largely not there any more.

Well said duckdodgers. Panic is easy on a website like this where there are a lot of posters with an anti-coalition agenda and take pleasure in scaring people with half-truths and downright lies.

If you want the truth on Child Benefit, the plans are that households where one or more parents pay higher rate tax - threshold currently approx £44,000 - will not receive Child Benefit after April 2013. The rules are still being discussed.

The thresholds for Tax Credits are changing from April 2012. There are exceptions for people claiming DLA and for families with more than 2 or 3 children and who are paying for childcare. The new threshold for a family with one child is a joint income of around £26,000. A family with two children can have a earn up to approximately £32,200.

Beyond those two changes is the 'Universal Credit'. The aims and impact are set out in the document I linked earlier. The details have not be finalised or established let alone announced, and anyone claiming to know that they will definitely be worse off or excluded should be treated with suspicion.

Bellstar why isn't you DP paying for (I'm assuming) his kids?
Your making yourself sound like a doormat and making out Heswall is being unreasonable for pointing out your financial arrangements sound frankly crap.

All families deal with finances differently. I see nothing wrong in the way bellstar uses childbenefit for the benefit of her dc. Our child benefit goes into an account in my name but some months its used to cover expenses. Other months it is saved and other times it plays for clubs etc.
Personally I am not looking forward to losing child benefit. However, we will have to cope. I just hope that they keep. HRP.