To think this child maintenance benefits loophole is ridiculous ?

[Strawberrrrry]

I was talking to my sister today. Love my sister, don’t begrudge my nieces and nephews etc. However, I find this benefits loophole ridiculous, though I appreciate she doesn’t make the rules and is just claiming what she can. Anyway.

My sister has just broken up with her partner, they have two kids together. He is a high earner and child maintenance will be £1,200 a month (via the child maintenance service).

She earns £900 a month working part time, school time hours.

She has just put in a claim for benefits and she has been told she will receive £1,400 a month. This includes housing benefits, income support, child benefit. It doesn’t include discounts from council tax etc.

This brings her total monthly income to £3,500 and some change (I have given rounded figures). Completely tax free. I had assumed her benefits would be reduced as she gets a high amount of child maintenance. But no. They don’t count it. She admits herself that her monthly income is massive and she did first assume that the children’s maintenance would warrant some sort of deduction.

As I said, fair play to her as she is only doing what the system allows. However, I can’t help but feel this is a huge loophole, and there should be some sort of cap i.e once you are getting £500+ a month in child maintenance, it starts to affect benefits? And I realise her ex could lose his job at any point or stop paying, but if that happens surely benefits could reassess at that point…

It just seems ludicrous that someone can be getting that level of monthly income from maintenance & benefits, completely tax free. I’m sure it can’t just be my sister in this position.

AIBU?

Child maintenance shouldn't come off benefits otherwise it punishes children of mothers who claim. They should be able to spend the money on the children

I would normally agree, but surely there should be some sort of cap? Otherwise you can end up with mother’s getting £££ in child maintenance (which doesn’t all go on the children, when we are discussing thousands) and also getting full benefits? There’s no incentive to work more hours either.

Yes, I do agree to some extent. As I thought that's the point. The parents paying for their own kids and not the tax payer!
I completely get it if father/mother can't or won't pay though, as that's the point of benefits.

I’m sure her standard of living will be much lower as a single parent than when living with her high earning ex.

Sounds like that’s what you want for her.

Because a lot of blokes don't pay it. It's to make sure the kids get enough money to keep them regardless.

How has she claimed Income Support? No claims can’t be made for it.

I get that blokes might not pay or may lose their jobs. Benefits could reassess at that point. It doesn’t seem fair that you can get unlimited child maintenance plus the tax payer funding benefits. There will be men who will pay as they are supposed to, and in those cases I think benefits should use it as part of the assessment, especially when the maintenance is huge.

Having worked at CMS your sister is in a tiny minority by getting such a high payment.

The reason it doesn’t count toward benefits is because when it previously did many women and children were left in absolute poverty because of the high number of non payers.

Tbh I think it's good as long as the resident parents spend it on the kids.

Say she's on benefits, and gets enough to scrape by (salary + benefits) ~ she adds £300 to cover his 'share' of food/clothes etc.

That leaves £900 a month for extra curriculars/activities/the kind of life those children would likely have if their parents stayed together.

What is NOT fair, is that money going from him to subsidise your sisters life (by offsetting benefits). It's also not fair he pays less.

I'm also going to assume he's earning more than 100k - so is in the top 2% of male earners. The number of those 2% who have children, pay CMS, and the resident parent is on benefits will be even lower. So it's not like millions of women are swanning around making use of this 'loophole' either.

When me and exh separated in 1991, his pitiful maintenance was taken from my income support , dd was 1 so I wasnt working. I'm always astounded when I remember that now it's not counted.
I was so poor then - it was awful.

If a bloke is paying, and it is a lot, why not deduct it from benefits?

If he doesn’t pay, revert back to full benefit entitlement.

Where do you like that she’s getting housing benefit and income support rather than universal credit? It’s sad that you are thinking negatively of your sisters financial situation rather than just being glad that she’s financially fine at a horrible time.

hope you’re doing better now. x

That’s why I said in my post, some sort of cap e.g £500 a month then it starts getting deducted.

otherwise you can have cases where maintenance is thousands and benefits are thousands. Doesn’t seem right.

Sorry, she is getting UC, but the advisor she spoke to at citizens advise broke it down into ‘housing element’ ‘support element’
etc.

What's your suggestion then?

Cap maintenence for non working mothers or part time working mothers? So punishing them for the shoddy state of childcare in this country, and the fact its harder for a RP to get a good full time job than it is an NRP?

Get maintenence taken from benefits? They used to do that, men didn't pay anyway and benefits were reduced, leaving thousands in poverty?

I'm not going to begrudge any RP extra money towards raising a child when they give up so much, career wise.

CMS barely have enough staff to chase basic non payers, never mind adding in a layer of complication of chasing people who sometimes help.

Plus what happens to women and children while that’s all sorted? He doesn’t pay. She has no money for food/bills and then has to wait for the CMS to confirm he hasn’t paid and for benefits to then pay out. That takes time

Yes when I became a single parent and had to claim Income Support back in 2004, I only got to keep £20 of the child maintenance - anything over that was taken off my Income Support. It was a disaster as ExP would switch between jobs/mooching off his mum/new job/back to mooching at a ridiculous rate so I was always having deductions made for maintenance I wasn't actually getting!

Thank you. I am! The worst bit was he was so appalled at having to pay me anything, he left his job anyway. I then got £5 from his benefits added to mine....and immediately taken off. Insane

otherwise you can have cases where maintenance is thousands and benefits are thousands. Doesn’t seem right.

You have a tiny handful of those cases.

There are a shitload of things that CMs should be focussing on - like the millions of non payers they don’t bother chasing effectively or the endless loopholes exploited by self employed NRPs - before this one

Because far too many non resident parents take the piss and don't pay what they should. Its a safety net.

So how much do you think they should remove from your sister and her children then? What would make you happy? Struggling to
buy food or just no fun money at all?

Great and the 2-3 months it's takes for them to resolve it the family can just .... starve? Maybe the husband can use it as a weapon, threaten to take it away at a whim?

When that was the system the rest of the owed amount was owed to the Sec of State to go toward the welfare bill.

The number of non payers was so high the amount of money owed was ridiculous so it was decided that something must be done..

so they decided to let all the RPs keep the money… tells you all about the attitude of politicians toward single parents!

It would seem to be reasonable to do what @Strawberrrrry says and stop certain benefits if the father is paying and the amounts are considerable. I suppose that the logistics of changing things regularly for some families, would be unworkable.

I doubt that very much unless he was a high earner but she controlled the finances and kept a fair chunk. She’ll have a much higher disposable income on £3500 a month. She has a higher “take home” than me and I earn more than 50K.

The system needs to ensure children are cared for and that people can survive, but reliance on welfare should never pay more than work and unfortunately that’s what the UK has become. Zero financial incentive to work as a single parent in this country and certainly not full time.