Accidentally pregnant so will I get tax credits when partner has another child ??

[Confusedbutton]

So I am pregnant due to a double contraception failure and I'm confused about the tax credit rules. I have a child and this will be my second but my partner has a child with another woman.
The website said i wouldn't get help if this is the third child were responsible for but the child my partner doesn't live here so does it count as this pregnancy being the third ?? Or would this be the second as my partners other child doesn't live with us ??

Actually there's an exhibition of photos near me, showing poor families in the 60s. I doubt anyone would wish to return to those levels of poverty, so asking how people used to manage is irrelevant I would have thought!

have 4 kids and we don't claim any tax credits currently. If my dh now lost his job tomorrow and we needed to open a new claim we would only get the child element for 2 of our children and we would not get the family element.

That's thankfully false anyone can claim tax credits for more than two dc born before April 6th 2017 until November 2018.

Today 19:11 Babyroobs

And just to add anyone who already has more than 2 children will continue to get tax credits for all of them if born before 6th April, but not for a third child born after April 6th and if opening a new claim now you only get them for a maximum of 2 kids even if they were born before April 6th.
This is how I understand the new rules anyway.

No, new claims for children born after 6th April 2017 will be diverted to to tax credits not UC and you can claim for unlimited dc until November 2018.

Mummy who supplies free uniform etc?

Ok seven - If my dh loses his job next year we will be in that situation I described. Tomorrow or next year it is still a frightening prospect.

how the hell does she or anyone else think people coped before tax credits?!

1. There was more child poverty.
2. Most families could survive on a single wage. My father was a factory worker in London and we lived on one wage. There were no luxuries, but the rent was paid and we had enough to eat and went on a UK holiday most years. In 2017 it's highly unlikely that a factory worker's (minimum) wage - without top-ups - would support a family of four. Housing costs are way too high and wages have been suppressed for too long.

Sometimes, user, things aren't quite as simple as you seem to want to imply.

@seven the school provides them. We give each student a complete school uniform consisting of two white shirts, trousers, shoes, blazer and tie. Pe kit of hoodie, shorts, two polo shirts, trainers and tracksuit bottoms. School bag containing pens (in black, green, purple), pencil, ruler, eraser, subject books, planner and reading record. If they are lost their name goes on the register for up to two stationary replacements and one uniform replacement at staff discretion.

70% of our children are living in poverty so it's the only way.

'Pregnancies really should be means-tested'. Yes. Of course they should. Only the wealthy should reproduce. The poor should be forcibly sterilised. That's the logical conclusion of your desired means testing, right? Or forcing abortions on women who don't meet the criteria set by your 'means test'. Or how would you like it to work? FFS. I can't believe people actually think like this.

Confused, I'm afraid that I can't offer any practical advice as I'm not from the UK so don't know how such things work there. But I wish you the very best of luck. And ignore the arseholes.

A lot of things have changed though in other places. When I was young my parents had to buy me my school uniform and pe kit. These days it's supplied along with shoes and stationary and all school books.

Where the hell does this happen?! I think I need to move. Round here we pay for everything, including school books for senior kids. Our daughters school had a hissy fit as we refused to pay for the ridiculously inflated school uniforms from them and bought the same colours from asda instead.

Actually I think tax credits have created a vicious circle, they subsidise below par wages in many cases.

They definitely do. However removing tax credits for those who need them is not going to make companies decide to pay people more unfortunately..

Mummy really? I didn't know that happened in schools. The school should have to but it's good to know the kids are getting what they need.
Babyroobs - well only if it's the very end of next year i.e. Nov/Dec yes it's frightening but at least people have a bit more time.

Where is school uniform and stationery supplied free, MummyBear? That's certainly not usual in the U.K.

We are in the NE. As I said though 70% of our kids live in poverty and if we didn't supply it they wouldn't be able to afford it. We've had kids turn up without ANY shoes or socks because they simply don't have any that fit anymore. It's a senior school so they need to attend and have equipment so they can do their exams.

I expect the reasoning behind it is to make people stop and think can I afford more than two children

No the reason behind it is to keep us all squabbling amongst ourselves so we don't notice where the money is really going, and it's working very well.

The 2 child benefit policy is obscene and will save no money whatsoever.

It's obscene because -

It says some children are not worthy of support. There will be children born third or later into poor families who we as a society have decided are not worthy of supporting. There are no 'better decisions' those children could have made. Nobody has a choice about the birth order or income of the family they are born into. We are deliberately withdrawing support from some of the poorest children in the country. We are punishing them for an accident of birth.

It will prevent lone parents on low incomes from forming families and living with the people they love. If you are dependent on CTC and have 2 children, and your partner also has a child, you will have to think really hard about whether you can afford to move in together and form a family. The right to family life is part of the human rights act. It is fundamentally wrong to keep families apart and you need a bloody good reason for doing it. Being poor is not a good reason.

It will force women who have been raped to jump through hoops and justify themselves to get support for their children. They will have to declare on a form that they have been raped or coerced and get a third party agency to verify that they are not lying. This is humiliating shit that no man will ever ever be faced with. Every time a woman has to show her TC award letter to someone (not infrequently, if you're poor) people will know. If a woman still lives with her abuser and hasn't yet managed to escape then tough shit, her child is not worthy of support. Leaving an abusive partner is a very dangerous time. I expect there will be more women who are murdered while trying to leave abusive men because they can't afford to support their children under the new rules.

It reinforces the mother / whore dichotomy. If you enjoyed the sex then no, your third child will not be supported, whatever good reasons you have for accidentally procreating. Shame on you! If you were raped or coerced then OK, we'll support your child as long as you provide frequent documentary evidence of not enjoying the sex and have this verified by someone who knows better than you.

Weird how there are people who oppose abortion but make an exception for rape.
And there are those who oppose supporting lone parents, unless their children are a product of rape.

And I suspect there is a fairly large overlap between those two groups. It's almost as if this is not about the children at all

It won't save any money because -

It's an administrative nightmare. DWP are having to come up with processes on the fly to comply with hasty, rapidly changing legislation. This has massive cost.

There will be additional costs for DHP's, social services support, extra NHS costs. These won't show up on DWP budget so expect a few good news stories but the costs are still there and we are all still paying.

Another big cost is staff turnover. The people who are expected to administer this system are underpaid, undersupported and undertrained. Lots of them give up, even if they went into their jobs with the best of intentions, and the more complex and inhumane we make the rules the more dedicated employees we will lose.

Mummy - . Even those living purely on benefits would be getting £80 a week ( Child tax credits and child benefit) per child per week. I think tax credits should be higher for teenagers/ secondary school age. Many kids of this age take mens size shirts and shoes which cost a fortune, it's not like you can hand stuff down at that age. Then there is the enormous cost of food for teenagers who are growing rapidly. There should be a teenage premium om tax credits once they hit a certain age !

The people who are expected to administer this system are underpaid, undersupported and undertrained.

And quite possibly rely on tax credits themselves, like so many working parents..

Yup. 40% of working families are reliant on tax credits. That is failure at a system level. It is cruel and unfair to place the blame on individuals and families who need to claim to survive.

I think TCs are on their way out, and rightly so.

Gosh, sorry. Try again.

I think TCs are on their way out, and rightly so. I think it is possible to recognise a welfare system that has been bloated and unmanageable and far too complicated to administer, as well as, crucially for TCs, one that doesn't recognise efforts people make to help themselves and their families and as such leading to helpless dependency.

That's problematic for all sorts of reasons. One major one is what happens when the children eventually move out. Another one is that it can lead to a worry about taking a promotion or a position with more hours or even better pay.

Unlike others I do not see the changes to TCs as a negative: to me, they are being phased out anyway. Another way of looking at it might be to think a certain amount of money is available and if that money won't stretch to a third child then a third child can't happen. I remember almost immediately after Corbyn led the opposition against cameron he cited someone struggling with one full time working parent and one part time working parent - and five children. That doesn't elicit public sympathy. Multiple children raise a family's income beyond what they could gain from working, ergo, it's tempting to do it.

Furthermore the planet needs no more humans and certainly the UK doesn't. Everyone in the U.K. could produce one child only for the next generation and we still would not run out of people to wipe our bottoms in old age as is often claimed.

So I am in favour of the changes and would like to see TCs obliterated in favour of childcare places and wraparound care which would enable parents to work.

I think childcare places are a fantastic idea for working families. I am super lucky that DH can wfh some days and sometimes PiL can have dc for the day so I can go to work. A year ago when I was in a different job I was only on cover supervisor wages where you are paid for the teaching hours you do at a rate of £14.10 for a full hour and some days you would get enough lessons to make it work and others you would get one lesson only. The days I got one lesson I was still paying £38 for a day of nursery and it became pointless because I was actually paying to go to work! If there were childcare places for families where both parents work (with earning limits if necessary) I could have stayed at work and we would have made it. As it was I gave up for a year till we had family childcare (at the time PiL couldn't help and DH had a different job).

how the hell does she or anyone else think people coped before tax credits?!

1. There was more child poverty. 2. Most families could survive on a single wage. My father was a factory worker in London and we lived on one wage. There were no luxuries, but the rent was paid and we had enough to eat and went on a UK holiday most years. In 2017 it's highly unlikely that a factory worker's (minimum) wage - without top-ups - would support a family of four. Housing costs are way too high and wages have been suppressed for too long.

@twofingerstoeverything This would make wonderful, perfect sense if it wasn't for the fact that the period of time you are on about is pre mid 1980's, and tax credits didn't come in til 2003. So many people survived on low pay with high house prices and NO TAX CREDITS from the mid 1980's to 2003 when tax credits came about.

So I reiterate, how the hell does the OP think people coped before tax credits? Because there was a long period of time between the mid 1980's and 2003, (almost 2 decades,) of low pay, high house prices, and no tax credits.

And no family I ever knew pre 21st century, ever got £30-£40K in state handouts! (Incl £1000+ a month tax credits for some!) It never happened! And enough of the tripe about it's a tiny amount that do this. Too many claim too much tax credits, and that's why it's being stopped. And about time too!

Unfortunately, although tax credits helped people on low pay to live a bit better, it also became open to abuse, as family after family decided to have more and more children, because they knew they would get mammoth handouts in tax credits for it. Don't pretend it didn't happen, because it did.

Many people were on low to average pay with no tax credits right up to 2003, and whether they had 1 child or 7, they got no more handouts (just a pitiful £50 a month extra child benefit, not the multiple 100s per child that people got in tax credits later on.)

And @needsahalo spare me the 'I hope life hits you' bollocks. Don't patronise me and act like I don't know what I'm talking about, and like I haven't lived, and strived, and struggled, and suffered financially. Fucking condescending comment!

If people would step off their left wing high horse for a minute, they would realise I am correct in everything I say.

My god, the amount of vitriol on this thread is disturbing.
Tax credits are an in work benefit .Y'know, helping to make WORK a viable option for families.
Cuts to the benefit system are draconian and the abuse of the system could have been weeded out without it.
And before anyone kicks off on me, I work ft in a decent job on decent pay, but there but for the grace of god.................

Well said @polly.

We receive nothing at all and both work (I'm currently pt as I explained earlier) and know how lucky we are. What helps is our location. If we lived in London like OP we would be struggling.

I think the system we have works well in parts but needs a shake up in others. There's families who are still struggling and that's with the current system because it's stretched and whenever cuts are made it hits all. I see children at school who have their breakfast and lunch with us because that's their meal just to help the decision at home of electricity or food.

I agree with a PP that sometimes the cost of working makes it pointless because of childcare costs and fact that any pay rise can often go against you. Also parents that have a good job and work full time I have no idea how they handle school holidays because that's 13weeks a year or more that they need childcare and I don't know any job except one like mine that would allow that. My DM actually kept working because she had my grandparents until I was 9 and we moved house and then she had me to look after my younger siblings all holidays. At 10 I was babysitting a 6yo and 6mth old 😆 now that's a case of someone who shouldn't have had more kids!

Also this poor girl has said that despite two forms of contraception she STILL fell pregnant (damn you 😂) and so it's not like she sat down and thought "ohhhh let's see how much I can get off the welfare system by having a baby". There are comments here likely to make her feel awful. I've never judged any of the parents at my school who are struggling to feed 4/5/6 kids because they need he help. A lot of our families are like us and practicing Catholics so can't actually use contraception. Completely irrelevant but we also have the highest incidence of domestic violence where my school is situated and I think poverty plays a part I that too so a welfare system the adequately supports those in need is definitely what is needed.

By "us" I meant my family and not the people on this post.