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?

Re "There's no incentive to work more hours either."

Why do you want her to work more hours if she can avoid doing so? Being a single parent means everything takes twice as many hours in a day compared to if you had someone else in the home to share the load already. All the things that need doing - playing with the kids, helping with homework, cooking, clearing up, washing up, hoovering, sorting, hanging, folding, putting away laundry, bathtime, story etc has to be done one after the other rather than one person doing homework while the other cooks, one person doing bathtime while the other one clears up. I don't think many single parents are wanting to do more hours out of the house. Many of us are burnt out as it is.

I think CM is a bargain for the NRP. I would certainly be better off if they lived with him. Especially as mine is set according to a CAO where the nights aren't stuck too so paid lower than it should be.

I think this is why so many men don’t want to pay child maintenance?? They think that their ex will be getting £££ a month from benefits . And in this case they are!
I’d take child support straight from the man’s wages tbh. And they would have to pay a minimum amount so couldn’t just ‘give up’ their jobs either. There has to be a better way to get irresponsible men to pay for their children.

Op funny how you begrudge the benefits more than the men who dont pay

Really it should just be that you get the benefits just in case (you don't want to leave people short if cms isn't paid) but then there's a tax return requirement to report your total income and if your earnings plus cms take you over a threshold the UC is paid back. This would still leave single parents receiving CMS better off than those with earned income as CMS isn't taxed.

This is no different than self employed people who have to put aside some of their earnings to pay tax later on.

Otherwise you can see there's a big incentive for fraud. Claim you've separated from your low earning partner so she can claim the benefits you aren't entitled to as a couple with one high income.

Oh and men should have the shirt taken from their back before they get away with not paying CMS.

But CM is for the children. Why would it be taken into account when working out what the RP gets?

CM is for the children. Why would it, or should be, taken into account when it comes to working out UC?

Because UC takes into account how many children you have to fund, both in terms of how much housing element you are entitled to, plus child element and child benefit. Just as I don't get UC child based elements because of my high earning DH, arguably you don't need state funding for your children if their father more than covers the additional costs having them brings you.

And what if they haven’t put the money aside?

But why wouldn't they? No one has any sympathy if a self employed plumber "hasn't put the money aside" to pay tax on his income.

Why do people feel SO entitled to public money they don't need? Its a finite pot and there are families, disabled people, sick people in hospital, schools, public services etc which need that public money so much more.

I'm not clear how London would be made into a "posh" ghetto by capping benefits? It's currently turning into quite a crappy place actually...

I'm also unclear why people would cease to want to serve coffee or clean things if housing benefit is capped (per the previous examples of other posters).

As the arguments against capping enormous housing benefits seem to relate to salaries for cleaners and baristas in London (as these examples given by others) perhaps they can explain why taxpayers should be subsidising coffee shops worker salaries and cleaners salaries through housing benefits?

They are both odd examples chosen by previous posters. The fact remains that the benefits system as it stands incentivises many people not to work and many full time working people are worse off than those on benefits.

With a sister like you, who needs enemies...

I can't bring myself to have any annoyance towards state money being spent on children or making single mothers lives easier.

I get annoyed when it is pissed up the wall on ridiculous vanity projects, so at least it is nice to hear it is doing some good.

I'm glad it sounds like your sisters life won't take a serious nose dive just because she is on her own now, and I'm glad that those without contributing fathers are hopefully being kept above the breadline.

Having and raising children is a job that is vital to society, now more than ever. It should be financially incentivised.

Exactly this! So many men stop paying, pay late, pay half etc etc. It’s too problematic to reassess constantly.

I'm sorry .....families need the money more? What are children and lone parents then if they're not families? You are surely not suggesting that a family of 2 parents and children is, just by the nature of being nuclear, so.ehow more deserving of government financial support?

That single parents and their children are not families is one of the most disgusting things I have read on here.

A lot of people work full time, and still get UC top ups. Years ago, you could work in such jobs and live comfortably. Now we have the cost of living crisis, and landlords pushing up rents. A lot of the benefits bill is on rent. That is not the fault of people claiming it at all, and it is also not the fault of their employers.

I am on UC, and am not better off than someone working at all. Like I said in a previous post, I must be doing benefits wrong. If someone could point me to where I could get even the equivalent of NMW in benefits, then I would really appreciate that. I am sure people on carer's allowance (which is about £81 per week) would also love to know more about how they take home more than people who work.

Who will do MW work in London and the SE if there is no support for housing costs?

They would have to commute in from Swindon, and pay £8k a year to do so (that was years ago... probably more now), or live in a grotty HMO with 15 other people.

I disagree with you on this one OP (and I’m married with x4 kids both of us work)

if a women will end up getting the same amount by the man NOT paying maintenance where is the incentive for men to provide financially for their children. If the women will end up with the same amount of £ from a man who DOES pay child maintenance as she would if they don’t pay and she claims benefits men will pressure women into just claiming benefits.

The number of RP like your sister whose Ex is wealthy and pays the correct amount on time is tiny.

I'm not saying "you're poor move somewhere else", I've got the same feelings about subsidising the royal family living in palaces.

I'm opposed to taxes paying housing benefit for people to live in places which those people paying housing benefit cannot afford to live themselves.

I'm sorry .....families need the money more? What are children and lone parents then if they're not families?

Poorer families. Kids turning up at school who've had no breakfast. Parents (single or partnered) working every damn hour under the sun but who only earn minimum wage and it just isn't enough.

Elderly folk struggling in poverty. Refugees. Kids in foster care.

There is not endless money. Every single one of us is responsible for taking more than our share.

If all 10 million or so households each took an extra £1k a month in benefits that they didnt need it would cost the government 120 billion pounds a year. That "vanity project" costing 300 million (most of which will be wages keeping people employed) is a drop in the ocean compared to what seem like small amounts paid out to everyone in the country.

I’d focus your anger on the system that leaves millions of children and adults impoverished as it is so broken rather than the vanishingly small cases where someone is making enough out of the system to maintain a decent quality of life.

Another thing that is unfair is that if the non resident parent is on benefits they only have to pay a set amount no matter how high their benefits are, my exh was getting £350 a week & only had to pay £5 a week, if he had been working & earning that much he would have had to pay £42 a week.

It’s also pretty obvious it would
cost the taxpayer more to chase non ROs for non payment, reassess claims every few months based on what has and hasn’t been paid, basically monitor every single benefits claim on the basis of fluctuating payments than to just accept that there are a very small number of people who will do better out of the system than might be ‘ideal’ for those wanting children of single parents to feel the pinch of poverty.