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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Maintenance

5 replies

Dorismary · 21/07/2022 08:15

My daughter's father is pretty wealthy. He recently moved to the countryside far from our daughter's school and successfully applied to reduce his maintenance to cover increase in travel costs.

The amount of maintenance he pays is negligible considering he refuses to pay for daughter's clothes, school trips, passports etc saying maintenance needs to cover everything.

I recently found out from a friend of a friend who is still in touch with him that he actually works as a consultant and property landlord of multiple properties as well as his PAYE income. His maintenance is only based on PAYE. Ive struggled financially since we split and particularly at the moment given increases in costs whilst he reduces maintenance.

I've had a look on companies House and can see multiple companies in his name. The problem is there's no company accounts published until next year. I'd like to go to the CMS but Im worried that if he's contacted by the CMS his accountant will be able to hide income.

Should I wait until his company accounts are published online?

OP posts:
ItsABitMeh · 21/07/2022 08:29

I probably would. If he's shitty enough to be like this over maintenance as it is then he's obviously the type who'd try and cover up what he can.

InChocolateWeTrust · 21/07/2022 08:32

The problem is that money left in the company won't be counted as his income, until he accesses it as wage/dividend etc.

Common tactic to dodge maintenance.

Sellie555 · 21/07/2022 10:12

Classic self employed dodging maintenance tactic! They could be earning hundreds of thousands but if they just take dividends from the company rather than ‘salary’ then the amount will always be assessed as very very low for maintenance purposes

don’t know why this loophole hasn’t been closed tbh. My own sons father earned a good amount but only declared dividends, meaning I only got £60 a month, meanwhile he was going on luxury holidays, designer clothes etc etc. the usual story!

the CMS didn’t care- they said it was up to me to prove that his luxury lifestyle was being funded by him, rather than by his ‘friends or family’ !!!!

Dorismary · 21/07/2022 10:22

This is awful. I knew the CMS was useless but I didn't know how useless. So dividends don't count in the assessment? They have so few powers of enforcement and it feels like they'll just refuse to investigate. Yet when ex moved house, they were quite happy to take his word for it and reduce maintenance by 90 quid a month. I'm assuming if I chose to move far away from daughter's school, my maintenance wouldn't increase! Feels v unfair

OP posts:
Sellie555 · 21/07/2022 12:05

No, what I mean is that these fathers pay themselves in dividends, which doesn’t count in the same way that a PAYE salary does for a non self employed person

this means their income is shown as artificially low, which in turn is the amount that the CMS take into account when calculating maintenance

all perfectly Legal and above board but morally wrong when it comes to how they calculate maintenance

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