To ask for the child benefit to be split?

[marieclare168]

Please be gentle with me as this is my first post.

My husband was married previously and has 2 teenagers. He has joint residency and therefore receives child benefit for one of them (their mother gets CB for the other - this arrangement was put in place when they split 8+ years ago).

We now also have 2yo DS together and I have my own CB claim for him. My payments for DS are at the 2nd child rate. DH receives payments at 1st child rate for stepson.

It just occurred to me that this seems unfair and that we really should be pooling the total we both receive from CB and splitting it 50/50 between the 2 children.

Husband cannot see my point of view at all and says it's never going to happen. He says I would be taking money off stepson if we split the funds as his award is for his specific child and my award is separate. My thought is, if my claim were genuinely separate I would be receiving the full amount for our DS but clearly the CB treat us as a household and theoretically assume the 1st/2nd/subsequent amounts are pooled in any household and shared for the benefit of the children.

YANBU. He gets higher rate for DSS, his ex gets higher rate for other DSC and you get lower rate for your DS - that's completely unfair. Admittedly it's only a few pounds a week but if you are a family who saves the ChB that amounts to 1000s over the course of the award.

YANBU if the amount to be argued over was slightly more than £3. Behave yourself.

Yes sorry of course I'm not wanting to argue over a few pounds per week, it's more the principle that they treat us as a 'household' hence DS getting the lesser amount, which is reasonable if finances were pooled but ours are kind of separate.

We have a joint act for bills. DH pays in 75% of the total needed, 1 pay 25%. This is based on respective incomes. I work PT. All fixed bills including child maintenance to his ex, household food etc come out of that. Anything left stays in our own accounts. CB is paid into our individual accounts. It is not given to the children. Both older children live here 50% of the time.

From our individual accounts, I pay for DS nursery/clothes/toys. DH pays for all DSSs activities/going out etc for both of them. If we do things as a family DH generally pays.

I don't know what rate the ex gets for the 1 child considered to be in her "household".

Errr, no I wasn't an OW!

We don't save the CB. DSs gets spent on clothes. DH uses his for the DSSs activities / spending money.

Ahh ok that makes a lil more sense lol I'm not sure but it seems a lil unfair that the 2 teen caims come in af 40 a week xx also if yu have them half the week etc why do you pay matinence x

In that case, I wouldn't open the can of worms - sometimes for the sake of family harmony relaxing principles may be called for. Still don't think you are being unreasonable though . BTW ignore the OW thing I think that poster may have ishoos

So pay both CBs into the joint account then? I agree would be fairer But it is such a small amount of money it's probably not worth starting world war 3 over....

Ex will get the lower rate, so to be fair you'd have to give her some more cash too, as she has DSCs half the time.

And yes, why do you pay for kids that live with you 50% of the time? That would be a much bigger issue than the CB to me.

Wilson yes I agree about WW3. For me it started as an interesting semi academic conversation, along the lines of.. ooh hang on, wait a minute, we have been doing this wrong, we should be splitting it, wonder what the CB people's policy is etc etc.
But DH has gone totally off the handle in response so you are probably right, a can of worms that should have stayed shut.

No she won't, if the OPs other DSC is the oldest child on his mum's claim she'll get higher rate for him.

I thought that CB was always paid to the mother except in exceptional circumstances a because of domestic abuse?

Ah, ok. Apologies. Still think that the maintenance is the bigger issue, though.

I would defo have more of an issue with matinence , so you have them 50 pecent of the time so you feed, clothe and house them etc pay for clubs and he pays matinence lol

I think if you have very separate accounts like that then it isn't fair for you to pay for all of your ds clothes, food, nursery.

Instead of arguing about cb (which sounds petty) ask for the nursery fees to come out of the joint account as it should be a shared family expense.

Also maybe you could ask your dh to pay for some regular expense for your ds (like shoes or haircuts) out if his personal account as it doesn't seem right for him to pay for nothing directly related to ds.

Technically actually we only pay CSA for one of the older children because DH is classed as resident parent for the other (the one he gets CB for). There is no proper allowance for 50% care in the CSA framework.
We get a discount for the number of nights residency.

And this business of the ex getting the lower rate, (as DH thinks is the case but we can't find the paperwork), surely can't be right.

Imagine he went off and got 10 more women pregnant, when they came to claim CB they couldn't all be awarded 2nd/subsequent child amounts even if they were the first children in the mothers household?

This is where I think its more about the theory/policy than my situation necessarily.

That makes no sense if that was the case the ex would have to pay csa to the child he has residents for, which would then counter act lol

Your DH is wrong, the ex will get higher rate for the child that is resident with her. Is she paying maintenance for the child that is resident with your DH?

But if they only pay for one child it must even out? This is all terribly convoluted.

Presumably once your DSS reaches age of 18 your DH will no longer be able to claim CB, and your DS will become no. 1, higher-rate child?

I agree with you, btw. But it is a can of worms. I would worry a bit about your DH going off the deep-end at a theoretical discussion about £ 3.50 a week, too.

Oh gosh, ignore that. The ex should pay to you too if it's a 50% split with the time.

Bruthas is correct.

The eldest child rate for CB gets paid for the eldest child in each household
So dad gets it for eldest child in his house mum gets to for eldest child in her house but op can't because she's in the same household as dad.

If the maintenance goes through the csa they have methods for dealing with split residency like this but if the mums income is low and the dads high then he will pay much more. Chb is higher rate for each household.

I find it ridiculous that maintenance is viewed as a joint family expense but nursery fees aren't. You're being taken for a mug.

And the difference is about £6 pw not £3 pw

The eldest child gets 20.30
Subsequent children get 13.40