Free School Meals on £32k salary

[icecube12345]

I'm a divorced father of two children in KS1 + KS2.

Share exactly 50/50 custody.

Due to various reasons, my ex gets double the CMS calculated CM payments plus additional spousal maintenance. In total, she'd need a job paying about £33k/year for the equivalent net income.

AIBU to think that it's morally wrong that my eldest in KS2 qualifies for free school meals when his parents have significantly more income than the vast majority? I hope not to make use of the free meals as I don't agree with it, but I'm shocked he qualifies.

@knittingaddict

That's not right. As she doesn't have an income, other than CM and Spousal maintenance, the calculations don't balance out to zero.

£33k income is not a high income, depending on where you live of course. It's up to you whether or not you claim free school meals for your child but don't knock those who do. In Scotland they are free for primary school children, tax payers pay a little bit more tax towards that and free prescriptions which they don't notice and it means children from poor families are not stigmatised.

Off topic but why on earth does your ex get any CMS if you have 50:50 care? Let alone double?

You said in your op that you paid 2 x the amount of child maintenance that the CSA had calculated. This has nothing to do with how much your ex earns or gets in benefits. It is based on your income alone.

@jessstan1

I wish we had that here. I am sure there are many families who don't qualify for some arbitrary reason but aren't financially able to pay for school lunches.

Bloody hell guys.. I know most of us on here are used to the very opposite of this scenario but maybe we could give this op the benefit of the doubt.. He's giving his kid a good standard of living in both households even though he doesnt 'have' to and he's getting shit for it. His point was a more general one about universal benefits.. Which we may or may not agree with but he's happy with his personal situation, unlike some nrps or their new partners on here who want to find out how can they pay less. OP, see above what others have said re the system.

@HugeAckmansWife

Thanks. I hadn't appreciated this was such an emotive subject. I get the frustration though.

So the overall outcome is the school benefits, no one loses out and it should be seen as an overall positive.

What I'm most upset about is how stupid I must have been because quite literally no one believes me!

You want a medal for supporting your children? Thousands of us do it every day without any recognition whatsoever. I work 3 jobs. My ex pays sod all. If I mention my ex not paying maintenance on a forum like this, who knows how many people will jump down my throat and blame me for having had children with a man who doesn’t support his children because, apparently, I should have had a fully functioning crystal ball on our wedding day. Men, however, believe they deserve recognition for paying anything at all.

Meanwhile, you have nasty little digs at those of us for who, free school meals are a lifeline.

Maybe a solution would be whereby both parents have to state how much CM they have paid and received each year

Again - you are avoiding the root cause (non paying fathers) to pontificate to a group of women who can do nothing about it.

As for tracking and tracing - something our government is demonstrably shit at implementing - this is the key point:

The sheer cost of administering such a system means it is likely to be cheaper to absorb the relatively trivial cost of a few extra children getting a meal

This is the case with most of the universal benefits. The marginal money saved is outweighed by the cost of administering.

Imho ALL children should get free school meals, just like in Sweden etc.

If the UK matched the Swedish tax rate then perhaps we could afford to.

Sweden

1. Sweden. Sweden takes the number one spot with the highest income tax rates on Earth – just over 57%

@Enoughnowstop

Please quote where I've had a dig?

Well, I hadn't wanted a medal, but now you've pointed out how unique I am for supporting my kids, maybe I should get one

Seriously though, no but when I have a forum of mothers telling me that they don't believe me because what I've said about how I support my children is so unrealistic, then I do question my own sanity.

FSM are organised by LA so the process to claim them varies from council to council.

It’s possible your ex claimed something else she is entitled to (most likely council tax related) and the FSM were allocated as part of that claim.

Well done on paying your way, but beyond sticking to what you agreed to pay your ex’s finances aren’t your business.

You cannot decide which benefits she claims and you can’t opt out of anything because you aren’t the resident parent.

The reason your ex qualifies for her dc to have fsm is that during the marriage to you she gave up work, presumably to facilitate your having a family and a career, losing her independent financial status, impacting any career she had or could have had and is now solely dependent on the £2k you send her each month, which is likely about 30% of your net take home pay and which will cease the moment the dc are 18/finish uni.

If she was on £32 k salary plus your cms payments she would not qualify for fsm.

This thread is mumsnet at its worst. OP asked a perfectly reasonable question - about something that is ultimately a political system ie FSM being based on salary rather than household income. He's taken on board that there are benefits to the school and thanked posters who raised it.
Yet he's getting slammed for all the dads who aren't involved with their kids lives and aren't paying for them? Which wasn't even relevant to the thread?
OP, I think you've been so patient with this thread!

@SchrodingersUnicorn

Thanks!

But she's not on a 33k salary... she's on the equivalent due to CMS and spousal maintenance. Surely that's the answer?

In fairness Schrodingers, sauntering into a forum of mums - many of whom are seeking support here because they get none from their XPs - and appearing to insinuate that women getting CMS are greedily hoovering up public funds unnecessarily was always going to go down badly. Maybe for an encore he could try proposing mandatory cycling for short journeys over at Pistonheads.

Better than the alternative way of doing it.

@LauraMipsum
...appearing to insinuate that women getting CMS are greedily hoovering up public funds unnecessarily was always going to go down badly

Where on earth did he insinuate that??

@jessstan1
In Scotland they're only free for P1-3, which sounds similar to what is done in England (KS1).

OP, we order meals for ALL the P1-3s in our school, even though many bring a packed lunch. We use them to feed older children who aren't provided with a lunch from home (some families won't register for FSM or other extras as they believe there is a stigma).

Yet he's getting slammed for all the dads who aren't involved with their kids lives and aren't paying for them? Which wasn't even relevant to the thread?

He is not “getting slammed” and non-payment of CM is absolutely relevant.

It’s because of the high default rate on CM that it is now disregarded for so many calculations. It’s a binary choice- include CM in income calculation or don’t. PPs are simply pointing out why the system changed from including it to disregarding it.

@icecube12345 you do have to apply for the FSM (Pupil Premium) - so please - on the schools behalf claim it. - that doesn't mean you have to order the school meals though.

There is something called Ever6 which means that if a child qualifies for the PP FSM then they remain eligible for the next 6 years. (So school continue to recieve the PP funding for the next 6 years). So you can see why this is really important to school finances. And it does benefit the children - your schools website must publish the PP spending and benefit each year.

Child maintenance used to be counted toward benefits payments (my grandparents suffered under that scheme). So many children and families ended up in poverty it was decided not to count it. There was no political will to push CSA (as were) to use their considerable powers to enforce payment.

There was also a time where RP's on benefits were only allowed to keep the first £20 a week of maintenance. The rest was owed to the Secretary of State to go toward the benefits bill. It was felt this was a better way of doing things and not allowing feckless women to keep their hundreds and thousands of pounts in benefits... The amount owed to the SoS got so high they scrapped the system and allowed RP's to keep the whole amount.

Despite the fact the system was scrapped because of NRP's not paying and owing the SoS so much there was still no political will to push CSA to use their considerable powers to enforce payment.

There are a lot of things wrong with the child maintenance system. That a parent with no income other than maintenance qualifies for free school meals despite her ex earning over the threshold is very, very, very far down the list.

What @LauraMipsum said. It’s as simple as that.

Setting a blanket figure that is easy to check is way more cost effective than paying to set up and administrate a more individualised system.

Jings

I said "APPEAR TO insinuate" - I'm sure he didn't mean it that way - and in the OP:

my ex gets double the CMS calculated CM payments.... she'd need a job paying about £33k/year for the equivalent... it's morally wrong...I'm shocked he qualifies.

For those who are really struggling while their XP fails to pay, of whom there are a disproportionate number on MN, that's not going to sound as neutral as no doubt the OP meant it to be.