Partner and csa payments

[Justaquery88]

Ok so before I get flamed here is the background

My partner has an 11 year old daughter with ex she has remarried she earns 40k and her husband around the same. They holiday three times a year money is not short at all.

We have three kids together and partner has to pay csa £300 a month but we are in a very bad financial state atm. His ex says he only has him one night a fortnight this is not true but without a court order to prove she’s lying csa won’t listen.

We are in debt can’t afford luxuries for our own three no holidays in a few years. If we pretended that we broke up he would have to pay me csa and his payments to her lowered.

Morally yes this is wrong but she is not a nice person to us at all

Legally where do we stand? No we won’t be claiming benefits or anything like that just csa which he will pay me
And I’ll put into the family joint account

My ex and his wife did this to get out of paying maintenance. It was such a shame when my sister someone reported them

That would be absolutely awful! How could you even consider doing that? You had three (not one but three!) more children knowing that he had a dd to provide for. £300 is not really that much for a whole month.

If she is actually with you much more you have to get that established if you can, but I’m not sure how when the child is 11 and the court is likely to be warey if making orders as to where she should be.

There are some extremely judgemental reply’s on here, the op came on here looking for advice not judgement. If she is potentially thinking of splitting up with her partner to relieve the financial burden then obviously things are hard at the moment.

And if anyone missed the part while you were all on your high horses, the op said her second pregnancy was TWINS, so it isn’t as if she planned on having three children but Mother Nature had other plans.

£300 a month does seem a lot for one child particularly if the other children are paying the price for that. I would try and go to court to get the claim adjusted to the correct amount. The mother is also in the wrong lying about how much time her daughter spends with her dad in order to gain extra financial gain.

Maybe phone the citizens advice and see if they can help you.

Has her mother had more kids?

You are not low income, £300 is not half the cost of raising his dd, you chose to have 3 more kids (I accept you didn't choose twins but you did choose a second child). Child support is very low as it is

You are not on a low household income.

How you choose to manage your finances is your own business, but a man NOT wanting to contribute to his child financially is pretty disgraceful.

The ex’s financial situation has absolutely no bearing (baring?) on what your partner should pay in child support.

If there is a discrepancy in how often the child spends with dad then do what needs to be done to establish a schedule (court order for example) to rectify this.

I’ve only flicked through the first page tbf but it really pisses me off when NRP/their current partner complain about being skint and struggling to pay child support (the legal minimum amount no less!) yet have had multiple children despite their financial problems.

Op, the two families have the same income. You guys chose to have three children, they chose to have more holidays. Choices.

So glad that my 2 are older and i dont have to deal with the ex at all. My ex tried all sorts to get out paying csa.

With both your wages combined, after tax & NI you should be bringing home about £4600.

£4600!! And you can't manage on that?!

@RositaEspinosa just like the daughters mother then who has fraudulently told cms that she doesn’t spend as much time with her dad as she actually does in order to gain more money.

At the end of the day they are 4 children here. All the parents are working and earning but one is in a better situation than the others. Op has said it is childcare that is crippling them. Childcare she will have to pay if she wants to work which she has to to provide for her children. No child should suffer at the expense of the other. The adults should put there heads together and come up with a solution that works for all

Let me get this right. You want to break the law and screw over his first child because you're in financial deep water? Not only is it illegal, but it's also morally quite wrong too!

You are going to get royally flamed here OP. If your partner couldn't afford to support his first child why oh why have more?

But by someone else’s saying the real amount would be in the same bracket as the claimed amount anyway so wouldn’t actually change the payments at all.

Or to put it another:

AIBU to commit fraud so that my DH doesn't have to financially support his child because we haven't been on holiday in while? We love her, we just don't want to have to provide for her.

YABU and greedy.

Op has said it is childcare that is crippling them.

And who chose to have extra kids? His first child didn't.

@crazymare20 people are being judgemental because OP and her partner deserve to be judged. We all go through hard times, it doesn't mean we stop paying for our kids.

£300 is not a lot when his wage is £39k.

How many people have family members provide childcare? Even for just a day? I have been on MN for over a decade, lots of people take the offer of free childcare. My Mum provided childcare for my sister. She did it for years and then was diagnosed with cancer and was dead within 3 months. Luckily my Dad stepped in because my sister's children were not toddlers but in years 6 and 3. So no nursery costs.

The OP had twins, fucking twins. My friend had to give up work when her planned 2nd child was actually twins as the childcare cost was too high for nursery. They had calculated for one extra child not two.

I think the vast majority of people spend all of what they earn, MN is a skewed look where people have 6 months salary in the bank as savings but that isn't normal. This is a place where people earn ridiculous salaries and but equally pay ridiculous amounts on rent/mortgage.

Your Dh does need to go to court to have it recognised how many nights your DSD actually spends at your house. This will hopefully reduce your Dh's commitment. Could your DSD stay with you 50/50? Is she still in primary school or secondary?

What do you think is a fair amount to pay towards the child given your income ?

How would 50/50 be in the child’s best interests at all to be uprooted from her luxurious lifestyle? Or the ops. She needs the £300 for childcare how would they fully support a 4th 50% of the time on that same £300?

crazymare - That is what the CMS is there for. Child support is not dealt with by the courts any more. It is to separate financial support from contact with the child.

Tbh, you will not get that much of a reduction for eow contact. My gs had eow contact with his dad via a court order, but his dad did not turn up. However, the court order allowed him a reduction for the time and money he did not bother to spend on his son. It was one-seventh if I remember correctly.

If he is paying £300 per month, then he must be earning toward £40,000. You should be getting reductions based upon the other children of the family.

The CMS work out the amount to be paid, not his ex and it is 12% of the gross income. You don't say how it is paid. If it is direct pay, then there are no charges. If it is collect and pay, it incurs a 20% charge. Collect and Pay only arises when there is a regular failure to pay child support. Any reductions or non-payments could mean a request by his ex to move to collect and pay.

In the words of Judge Judy, if you make them, you pay for them. I have little time for those who try to avoid child support. You could actually end up worse off by using fraudulent/avoidance tactics. I would think on this.

It's always twins on these goady threads.