School Uniforms and CMS

[Eazypeazy]

Dear all,

I get monthly child maintenance from the children's father. I have asked that he pays for half the childrens new school uniform but he is refusing. I have said that the CM does not cover the costs of the uniform but be thinks otherwise.

Am i being unreasonable in requesting this?

My ex brings home £3.2k a month. He pays me £500pm in proportion to how many nights he has DS overnight. £500pm is a lot, but that still leaves him with £2.7k a month. He's hardly living in poverty. Men who are high earners should still have plenty of money left after paying maintenance, if they don't then they're doing something wrong.

I understand it might seem like it should all be covered by CMS but as a sliding scale of highest amount paid for 0 overnights to 0 paid for 50/50 surely all costs should be similarly split. Paying lower maintenance because DC are with non resident parent 3 nights a week should really mean all costs (housing, food, activities, clothes, toiletries, pocket money) are taken care of for those days by that parent. In reality rather than having DC turn up with absolutely nothing at second home it would make sense for the same distribution of costs to be applied to things like clothes and particularly school uniform. Why should resident parent being paid maintenance in line with non resident parent having DC 3 days a week be expected to pay all clothing, uniform and activity costs?

These threads ALWAYS go the same way. It is undeniably, statistically true that MOST RPs are women. It is undeniably, statistically true that an average CMS payment, where one is made at all does not come close to covering 50% of reasonable costs, especially when childcare is included. Other than CB, not all lone parents get other benefits, but if they do it's because they can't work / earn more due to childcare. NRPs can usually work whatever hours they like with the RP having the child during those times (see recent thread about the guy wanting his ex to live her life round his shift pattern and refusing to say why he won't do 50/50.)
Yet still there will be 'what abouttery' from those who do not fit this general pattern and the thread gets detailed from the OPs situation to people wanting to make the point that not all NRPs are male or rubbish. We know. But this thread is not about them.

Also CMS is loosely defined as a contribution toward 'essentials' with no list of what that includes and no acknowledgment that a parent who only provided essentials would be a pretty piss poor parent.

No, you said you pay more in maintenance and extras. That’s not the same as extras could be £5 a month or £500. If your DP is paying more than 12% in maintenance he should have it recalculated

Well we pay more in basic maintenance and then obviously much more in extras. He is paying more than 12% actually. His payment was calculated on last year's p60 when he did lots of overtime. Since April, he's had no overtime. Non at all. But because it's not quite 25% less (more like 23%) they won't reduce the payment. So realistically we're paying a very unsustainable amount and will be for at least a year.

Many people can’t afford to live alone. If they could there would be no need for house shares and HMO’s.

True, but how many RPS are going to let the other parent have overnight contact in a house share or HMO?

Dad's get slagged off for not having enough bedrooms but there's the big fat reason why.

@Waxonwaxoff0

My ex brings home £3.2k a month. He pays me £500pm in proportion to how many nights he has DS overnight. £500pm is a lot, but that still leaves him with £2.7k a month. He's hardly living in poverty. Men who are high earners should still have plenty of money left after paying maintenance, if they don't then they're doing something wrong.

I'm not talking about high earners. It's the average earners who struggle.

Greedy to want a one off contribution for uniform? Sounds like my gs's dad. CMS is a minimum amount each month based upon Tax records usually a year behind. It is 12% of gross income. Reduction is made for time spent with the NRP. CMS is a Service of last resort only believe me.

You lose 4% if they collect and if it goes to bailiff service, you lose around 30%. I get £70 out of the £100 he owes each month and that is if he pays.

In the past few years, I don't get payment for gs for around eight months each year as he knows enforcement moves very slowly and it is worth taking it to the wire.

In ten years I have asked for one extra contribution and it was school uniform. I asked for £90. He went absolutely mad and even rang my gs's school complaining. They couldn't believe it. He offered me £30. One payment of £90 in ten years is greed? Wait until it happens to you, Lisa3578.

@TrustTheGeneGenie

I understand that ex will not accept an agreed amount on a mutual arrangement that does not have to go through CMS? This usually leads to issues because then it is not flexible or realistic. If there have been issues between them with trust I can see how this slides into this situation. No one is disputing that the system doesn’t always work fairly for NRP in all circumstances but in most circumstances the RP is effectively discounted nights but still has to pay for everything across all 7

lyralalala

TrustTheGeneGenie
Yes. Let’s further the common misbelief that poor men are always left skint by maintenance, whereas women are coining it in

Some of them are.

Like I said we pay more in maintenance than we do for the child that lives with us.

Dp wouldn't be able to afford to live alone!
No, you said you pay more in maintenance and extras. That’s not the same as extras could be £5 a month or £500. If your DP is paying more than 12% in maintenance he should have it recalculated.

Have it recalculated to the BARE MINIMUM
God forbid

@TrustTheGeneGenie

No, you said you pay more in maintenance and extras. That’s not the same as extras could be £5 a month or £500. If your DP is paying more than 12% in maintenance he should have it recalculated

Well we pay more in basic maintenance and then obviously much more in extras. He is paying more than 12% actually. His payment was calculated on last year's p60 when he did lots of overtime. Since April, he's had no overtime. Non at all. But because it's not quite 25% less (more like 23%) they won't reduce the payment. So realistically we're paying a very unsustainable amount and will be for at least a year.

Many people can’t afford to live alone. If they could there would be no need for house shares and HMO’s.

True, but how many RPS are going to let the other parent have overnight contact in a house share or HMO?

Dad's get slagged off for not having enough bedrooms but there's the big fat reason why.

So, your situation is a complete anomaly, presumably because of the pandemic

It’s hardly comparable to the general situation of maintenance and the levels or payment and non-payment.

I didn’t say parents should. I just said your DP is hardly unusual in that he couldn’t live alone.

@TrustTheGeneGenie Make sure your DP reports his income change anyway as there is currently a push to have the 25% bracket changed for covid income issues

There’s no guarantee it’ll happen, but it is a big push atm.

So, your situation is a complete anomaly, presumably because of the pandemic

No not really this has happened before. This time because of the pandemic yes, but overtime is either all or nothing at his work and yes he puts some away when he gets it but it's not easy. It means we don't as a household benefit from it at all.

We have reported it to the CMS they will not do anything.

@Lisa3578

my boyfriend is in a similar position. He pays what the CMS tell him to pay every month and she still demands extra money for school uniforms, trips and the like. It is just greed in my opinion

The CMS amount is the absolute minimum that he’s supposed to pay, kids are expensive!

[quote Menora]@TrustTheGeneGenie

I understand that ex will not accept an agreed amount on a mutual arrangement that does not have to go through CMS? This usually leads to issues because then it is not flexible or realistic. If there have been issues between them with trust I can see how this slides into this situation. No one is disputing that the system doesn’t always work fairly for NRP in all circumstances but in most circumstances the RP is effectively discounted nights but still has to pay for everything across all 7[/quote]
No she won't agree to anything at all ever.

I agree it's a shit system and I agree a lot of nrps miss out. I know, my mum was one of them. My dad still owes her a lot of money she'll never get.

Seriously? The cms basically shut up shop as far as collections were concerned, are next to useless at the best of times but all of a sudden when the ( mostly male) paying parents need something changed in their favour they're all over it. How surprising 🙄

@TrustTheGeneGenie

So, your situation is a complete anomaly, presumably because of the pandemic

No not really this has happened before. This time because of the pandemic yes, but overtime is either all or nothing at his work and yes he puts some away when he gets it but it's not easy. It means we don't as a household benefit from it at all.

We have reported it to the CMS they will not do anything.

It’s an anomaly because of his overtime. People don’t usually have a 23% variation in salary from one year to the next.

They can’t do anything. 25% is a legal trigger point annually to stop people playing silly buggers with it.

He does not have to provide uniforms or anything else for that matter as long as hes providing maintenance

@HugeAckmansWife

Seriously? The cms basically shut up shop as far as collections were concerned, are next to useless at the best of times but all of a sudden when the ( mostly male) paying parents need something changed in their favour they're all over it. How surprising 🙄

They are shit.

They haven’t done anything yet, but there’s a campaign to have the trigger amount changed to 20 or 21% this year.

Sadly because of the shit way successive governments have treated maintenance it probably has more chance than doing anything remotely productive in collection terms is

Thing is, if cms was properly funded and linked to HMRC they could dynamically change it, say every three months for smaller drops or rises in income but a bigger problem I think is the lack of clarity about what it should cover, as I said above which causes nasty, passive aggressive exchanges with nrps about what it's reasonable to ask for.

They can’t do anything. 25% is a legal trigger point annually to stop people playing silly buggers with it

Lots of people have variable overtime!

Yeah I get that but doesn't mean it's not massively hard for us. It's the dismissal that pisses me off.

@HugeAckmansWife

Thing is, if cms was properly funded and linked to HMRC they could dynamically change it, say every three months for smaller drops or rises in income but a bigger problem I think is the lack of clarity about what it should cover, as I said above which causes nasty, passive aggressive exchanges with nrps about what it's reasonable to ask for.

Oh yeah absolutely. I wish it was like this. That we we can pay more when we have it, and less when we don't.

They manage it with universal credit.

@HugeAckmansWife

Seriously? The cms basically shut up shop as far as collections were concerned, are next to useless at the best of times but all of a sudden when the ( mostly male) paying parents need something changed in their favour they're all over it. How surprising 🙄

If that's aimed at me I don't know what you mean. They aren't all over anything for us!

If he has them 3 nights a week and some weekends, he will get a deduction from CM for this. He should contribute to school uniform and all other costs (school trips etc) in the ratio 3/7 as he has the ,Indy for 3 days a week, you will get ,only for 4 days a week.

@HugeAckmansWife

Thing is, if cms was properly funded and linked to HMRC they could dynamically change it, say every three months for smaller drops or rises in income but a bigger problem I think is the lack of clarity about what it should cover, as I said above which causes nasty, passive aggressive exchanges with nrps about what it's reasonable to ask for.

All CMS needs is the political will to do more. It doesn’t need much, but there’s just a passive acceptance of “well that’s just how it goes”.

I quit after being told to give a man who’d been dodging payment for five years another chance to pay the following month because he promised.

The tools are all there and available, but when you consider that a huge chunk of that money used to be owed to the Secretary of State and when the debt got too big they scrapped th system, rather than change collections, it shows there’s no will for any changes.

It was aimed at the fact that the cms is overwhelmingly used by women trying to get men to do what they ought and surprise surprise there is absolutely no political will to sort it out, increase or improve enforcement of non payment and they have the power to write off unpaid maintenance when it's not owed to them, but the RP.
We know you are not in that bracket. Nothing on this thread is about people in your situation, so can you please stop trying to divert the discussion.

*Is it still the "bare minimum" if you earn 100k a year or?

It is. CMS has a cap it will award. NRP's with genuinely high earning exes need to go through court, rather than CMS, to be allocated a proportional amount.*

This is not true. I think it is dealt with by the courts at £250k. My DH is within the CMS remit and pays £850 pcm which is still based on the same calculations as if you earn £10K per year.

In response to the OP, YANBU to ask. Its hard to measure how R his response is without knowing more about it.