To say enough is enough and we need to galvanise for a change in child maintenance laws

[Suliemantra]

I have just read the thread about the man training as a medical doctor in his 50s meaning the mother of his children works full time, is in debt and he pays nothing.

I have just read about the woman whose ex has 50 50, pays maintenance and does no parenting of their children while in his care.

I have read countless threads of men refusing to declare income to avoid child maintenance.

The family courts insist on 50 50 splits if the father wants it but makes no mandate for a father to be involved with children.

The financial and caring burden is disproportionately on women.

Our children are being damaged and our own ability to live outside of poverty considerably compromised.

Why is this allowed to happen? Why aren't we petitioning parliament? How can we do this?

Change needs to be rallied for - does anyone knows of existing campaigns or knows how to campaign in a unified and successful way for change??

if both have the child 50% of the time, why would they not notice? alternatively things like that could be written into the custody agreement. You still have the issue with all that if one parent has the child FT and the other EOW.

Plant If they are not paying, then there is not much to lose
That's the whole point - find a stick

Most NRPs can pay, but have deliberately chosen not to pay
and their lives continue as normal

Losing a driving licence is a big handicap wrt quality of life, even for an NRP who deliberately chooses not to work
and especially for those who have chosen self-employment to hide income

That's a real stick to force self-employed or non-working NRPs to pay

Of course, if any are employees, then payment should be deducted at source along with NI etc
so the licence stick would be unnecessary

bigchoc yeah I suppose so. I can understand why it would make someone pay because it would inconvenience you massively.

Its a shame it has to get to that point!

This will prove to be an interesting thread. I agree that the father should maintain financial responsibility and be upheld if he doesn't. My Husband pays child maintenance to his ex for his child, he also has him 2 nights of the week (they live 30 miles away so he cannot have him during school time), buys him all his school uniform and other clothes he may need. About 3 years ago his mum had a breakdown and (before he was school age) he came to live with us for 6 months, his mother paid us no maintenance, kept his child benefit and child tax credits so it's not always the father in the wrong. Just my experience. How would this be policed though? What is the real cost of raising children? Surely it changes as they grow.... it's a very open topic but certainly one that needs addressed!

but that doesn't close the loophole which self employed NRP's use to avoid paying
Well declaring a false low income for self employed tax purposes is fraud, so that ought to be taken very seriously.

hepz you're absolutely right it should be, but seemingly it is not as we see so often on threads on here..

If fathers were required to pay 50% of childcare it would go a long ways to levelling the playing field.

I totally agree. I would like to see it taken seriously and for orders to be made transferring assets if need be. Child support should not be optional. Part of child support is also support for the rp, children need care and attention and unless there is a genuine 50/50 scenario, the rp should be compensated for that.

We absolutely should not allow women to be continually impoverished by bearing the financial burden of raising children.

I'd support a campaign on this. My twatty ex is dodging payments as much as he can (encouraged, I'm quite sure, by his new wife who doesn't have DC herself). I'm still shocked at that because his own father was incredibly generous to him.

I think men feel like they're paying money to their ex-partner -- they forget it's for their kids.

Having recently divorced I would argue that 50:50 is not in the interests of the child. exDH and I have tried to do this but DD has requested we stop. She found being pushed from pillar to post all the time really difficult. She is 8. We never seemed to have the right shoes in the right places and we were always either going to or coming back from her Dad's - or at least that was how it felt.

We are now looking for a better balance that means her life is more stable but that her Dad get's to spend good quality time with her.

As I am by far the higher earner I haven't asked him for maintenance. Actually if anything money goes the other way and I am paying for their summer holiday otherwise he'd struggle to afford it.

Breakfastpizza

Agreed on the childcare costs, I had no option but to work when my ex and I separated. I had to pay upwards of £1200 a month for childcare. Yes, the tax credits paid for some of that. But how much cheaper would it be for the state if my ex partner had paid them with me instead?

(His child maintenance was just about 1/4 of the childcare costs)

I doubt you'll find people who disagree with you that fathers should pay maintenance where it is due. Absolutely no issue with that - of course they should. So should mothers who are the NRP.

You are wrong when yoh say that family courts will grant 50/50 residence when the father wants it. They might. They might not. Courts are driven by the best jnterests of the child. That almost always means maintaining a strong relationship with both parents. But 50/50 will only be agreed if it works - a father who is unable to commit to the practical steps needed to make that work, is unlikely to be granted it.

I strongly disagree with the suggestoon you appear to be making that 50/50 care means the father should still be required to pay maintenance. It takes two to make a baby. Both parents have a financial responsibility to the child, not just the father. And, with 50/50 care, both are equally capable of working. Child maintenance law isn't just about 50/50 time - it requires equal shared care. So, if one parent isn't pulling their weight with doctor visits, schools, whatever, then even if they have 50% of the time, they are still treated as NRP and liable for maintenance. So the provision is there to secure maintenance from either parent who doesn't pull their weight. But where both are genujnely equally parenting, can you explain to me why one parent should still be expected to subsidise the other?

Too many fathers see it as paying money to his ex, rather than for their kids. The ones that do pay use it to brag how much of a good dad they are for paying for their own kids.

Disproprtionately, more men are homeless because they cant get residency/custody of their children - the parent (Nearly always the woman) who keeps the kids, keeps all the benefits.

That's bollocks and I have a LOT of experience in homelessness work.

I'd support a campaign. Assume that if a man suddenly gives up work after divorce it's for deprivation of the children. Look at self-employment loopholes. If all else fails, community service and the government pays for their labour to the mother.

Sorry SingleDad but the equal care is just not happening enough for that to be the case. It's just not. It's not happening in most parents who are still in a relationship with each other, and it's not happening with separated parents. Agree that true 50/50, would in no doubt be the best solution for everyone. But I'm not naive enough to think that that is where we are now.

My sons father works cash in hand, well paid. I shared this information with the CSA.....as was.

A few weeks ago, I received a letter stating they had decided they couldn't recover the money and were writing it off. Probably about £6,000 in total that he 'should' have paid.

He has no contact because he's a manipulative narcissist.

My sister's divorce has dragged on for four years whilst he financially abuses her through the courts because he won't pay enough for her to support their children.
He delays and conceals and bullies. It's disgusting and the courts and solicitors are colluding in the abuse. The whole system is absolutely fucked.

Agreed wholeheartedly. I think it should be taken directly from their wages.

My ex pays me £200pcm for three children, it is not enough at all. He is allowed to pay less because he lives with his girlfriend’s two children, I really don’t think that is fair. He also only sees them for around six hours a week and when they’re there he feeds them one ‘meal’ which is just a couple of vegetables and a Yorkshire pudding so I have to feed them again when they return home.

He also continuously fucks me around with maintenance payments. I have been asking him to set a standing order up for months but he keeps making excuses. The banking app wouldn’t work so he went to the bank who asked for ID and he didn’t have any, then said he’d sorted it but the standing order failed to work apparently . Yesterday he ‘hadn’t been paid’ which was bollocks. Some months he has split the payment into two weekly payments so he could afford to take his girlfriend’s children on holiday... Oh and he doesn’t take our children anywhere for their birthdays because he knows I do, yes he has brazenly admitted this.

I give up, he’s a wanker. Sorry for the rant but I am bitter about it. He is a crap dad and evidently is allowed to be because he is a man. If it were me I would be utterly vilified.

I would add that the laws around property and money and marriage also need altering.

Women with men who refuse to marry (having often promised they would) have NO power and no say.

Too many women end up the default stay at home parent, losing careers in the process and then if unmarried, end up with nothing.

The whole tradition of the man doing the asking leaves all the power in their hands too. I know that's changing but it's still imbalanced.

I would like to see it be like the US system where you can be sent to jail for non payment. That wouldn't solve the choose to go unemployed, or take a lower paying job types, but it would work for some.

I agree with all the above posts except the point from bebebutton that anybody else but the ex should be paying for the children. The children are the financial responsibility of the people who created them, nobody else.

Other than that, I'd be happy to see feckless 'fathers' lose everything if they refuse or circumvent payment for their children. They should have no benefits of any kind until they're prepared to pay what's due.

So many NRPs seem proud that they are paying the minimum which may even be nothing. My ex wouldn’t pay for 5 years and now will just miss a week if he can’t afford it. It’s so unfair as the PWC can’t just opt out of buying food yet the NRP can just not pay if they want. The CMS and government do not see this as an issue because it’s not really affecting them and no one apart from the kids are missing out.

My exh does not pay child maintenance because he doesn’t work but he has hundreds of thousands in the bank. CMS do not want to know.

The system is a joke.
If a man (I’ll choose man for example’s sake, though in my personal anecdotal experience the worst offender is a woman) moves in with his girlfriend, her income is ignored by CMS. Some men exploit this - not working, working cash in hand, using a self employed business to put a share of the earnings falsely into her name...

Now you argue that that’s right - it’s not the unrelated woman’s responsibility.

Yet when my boyfriend moved into my house, my income reduced his son’s uni maintenance loan*.

So - as a government, which way do you want it???

The NRP’s full household income should be used. If that means they can’t have the financial benefit of house-sharing? Tough shit.

*to be clear: I support my stepson 100% and chose to live with my boyfriend fully aware of and accepting this

@tribalmotherofthree thanks for replying. I get what you're saying that, all too often, care isn't equal. But the OP is calling for a change in the law, and saying that the rules on 50/50 are part of the problem. Since the law already requires care to actually be equal before maintenance isn't due, I'm still trying to understand what change on the law is being suggested?