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?

This is it. There's a huge sacrifice involved with lone parenting. I was in a place where I'd hit a plateau with my career ladder and I need to do further training in order to be able to progress. I have all the skills and experience to work at a higher level but I need the certification. But I cannot get it because I can't afford the fees on my wage while covering everything else and knowing that I cannot count on cms and that that isn't my money to begin with. Plus I wouldn't physically have the time to be able to do it. So while at this stage in my life I should be able to move up and into a more permanent role, I'm stuck and will have to make do. Meanwhile my ex is free to do what so ever the fuck he wants living as a single man with no responsibilities bar one payment a month. There's an economic sacrifice that's happening there and essentially lost earnings that I'm taking the hit on in order to raise our child alone.

So how does this problem get solved? If "housing benefit" is no longer paid, and the tenants dependent on it, because their wages don't fully cover rent and living expenses (and many people claiming UC are working) move away, can't afford to commute or are evicted, do you think landlords will simply lower their rents?

No, they won't. Better off people will be able to move in perhaps. Or properties will remain empty because they are often simply assets in portfolios, and there are tax breaks for often big corporations (often foreign) that own them. It's no skin off their noses in many cases whether properties are occupied or not - even more so in the case of commercial properties, which contributes to the current demise of town centres up and down the land.

Many professional landlords are also politicians, strangely enough. The current system is set up for the benefit of such property owners. They don't care about people, they care about assets and profits.

Temporary accommodation for the homeless can cost councils thousands more a month than average rents, paid into private landlords hands to boost their property portfolios. There's no cap on that.

The whole system is indeed a big shitshow from every angle, but it's obviously serving some people well, and it's not the tenants who can be evicted and pushed from pillar to post, destabilised in every direction and putting children at a massive disadvantage in particular.

So who is benefitting? A small number of wealthy individuals who only care about amassing more wealth, and the power that it generates, and hang the consequences to the rest of the population.

You consider that reasonable?

You're jealous of your sister. Disgraceful.

But as we keep saying, lots of people on UC work, therefore are tax payers, therfore are paying their own benefits? Ot at least making a contribution.

If you expect a lone parent to move, who is going to bear that cost? Are you literally going to put them on the street if they can't find the cash to move.

And how are you then going to get that lone parent back into work? How are you going to ensure sufficient school places? Healthcare?

I also believe that CMS and UC systems don’t “speak” to eachother. I guess that highlights why the loophole exists. However the money you receive for your children isn’t necessarily a reliable income. I barely get anything from my ex, but his mum might send us a few hundred to cover gifts or expenses etc. I wouldn’t expect that to be classed as income.

Seems like your sister is lucky for now - CMS stops at 16 anyway.

She obviously doesn't have more disposable cash than when she was with her husband because she would have had his full income then to support their family. Now she only has a fraction of it and has to support her children for what seems the majority of the time

I think Xenobitch is in fact highlighting just how unreasonable it is

I think the main issue is that implementing a system that tracks maintenance payments monthly in order to catch outliers like the OP's sister would cost way more to implement than it would save in benefit money. Plus plunging women and children into poverty because ex'es can always say they paid in cash and there would be no proof otherwise. And as for charging owed child support to the NRP's estate as has been suggested, that would mean that adult DV's would be paying back the maintenance they didn't receive as children. So everybody loses, in order to catch some edge cases.

There is a Benefit Cap ( www.gov.uk/benefit-cap ) but at £1,400pm your sister is under it. Claimants in receipt of certain types of benefits (usually disability and/or pension age) are also excluded from the cap.

Your sister's UC payment will be made up of a Standard Allowance (£393.45pm if she's over 25), the Housing element (this amount is dictated by the Local Housing Allowance for her area for the type of property she needs and may not cover the entirety of her rent) and two Child elements (up to £1,739.37pm for two children or more). Her P/T income of £900pm will reduce the amount of UC she gets.

There are two real killers for most single parents: the two-child rule (if they have more than two children, which your sister doesn't) and if they are renting their home in the private sector. How much does your sister pay in rent? I'm guessing more than £1,400pm so that would be all her UC gone on rent alone.

37% of absent parents pay no child maintenance whatsoever and 63% pay some, but this could be a pittance based on their gross salary and nothing like what it costs to actually support a child. Your sister is in the very fortunate position of having no more than two children (so she's not subject to the two-child rule) and her ex not only paying CM, but paying a decent amount. However, she's an "outlier" - her situation is not typical and from my experience of advising single parents on benefits, it's very hard for them to make ends meet even when they're receiving a small amount of CM from the absent parent. You would be quite wrong to think there are many people in your sister's situation.

In most cases, from 12 April 2010, any income received from CM payments is not included as income when calculating UC. The few exceptions to this rule are that some local authorities include it when calculating entitlement to Council Tax Support and it may be included for UC claims if the CM case was opened before March 2003. (NB: spousal maintenance payments are counted as income for calculating UC and other benefits.)

Incidentally, Income Support is an entirely separate benefit and you can't get it at the same time as UC) and Child Benefit and Council Tax Support are not part of UC.

State Welfare Benefit rules are complex and bewildering, so please don't think that your sister's fortunate situation is largely replicated across the country because it isn't. Most single parents on benefits are struggling with Gingerbread reporting in March 2023 that 76% of single parent families are in debt, with half of those reporting debts of over £2k.

Debt owed that’s still on record is currently charged to estates. That’s one of the reasons I regularly tell people on threads not to allow CMS to write off their arrears.
I dealt with three cases when I worked there where exactly that happened. In one of them a man owed over 30k and he hadn’t made any provision for his late-teen/early adult children in his will so the money owed to their mother is the only money they benefited from.

The main issue is actually the social acceptance of not paying. If there was large social disapproval at not paying - and people often disapprove generally but often have stories about how their partner/brother/son is justified in not paying - and then the system for payment was in a good place then anomalies could be looked at.

atm though people who are entitled to a large sum of maintenance and get that large sum are a tiny tiny minority. So small they shouldn’t feature in policy

CMS stops at 18 unless your child is still in education not including University. If still in education it is payable until age 21

But the child maintenance is for the child/children.

Until we actually FORCE men to pay for their children and jail them when they don't then no. Men can stop paying maintenance at any time. My ex does it regularly 11 years after our relationship ended. He walks out of jobs and suddenly no longer pays. CMS is a joke

I completely agree with you op and I know there are many more people who agree ( look at your poll results, majority chose yanbu) … but there are too many people in this country benefiting from UC and any attempt to reduce it or take it away will be met with very strong backlash. You’d need a very brave government to touch the subject.

My dh pays his ex a very generous amount in CM, over 1k per month, he never missed a payment. Her minimum wage salary (of course, what a cliche) is also topped up by nearly 2k in benefits every month meaning her income is higher than a take home salary of 60k.

Yes I agree maybe they just shouldn’t get the child element of UC and/or the CHB if get maintenance over a certain level ? So those in none or smaller amounts still have protection but those getting high maintenance aren’t being supported twice for the same child ?

How many overnights does your dh have his children each week?

Good idea in theory, but that only works if the NRP pays the CM every month. Only way that is guaranteed is if it’s deducted from wages, which I think most NRP’s would object to. Also, CM varies due to salary, weekends/visits with NRP, etc. and can change any time. It takes weeks to sort on both UC and CMS.

Child maintenance stops at 16. Child benefit is what you’re thinking of.

Two reasons for this.

1. Before this 'loophole', children were left in poverty because thousands of men in this situation pay less than they should or nothing at all.
2. The admin costs of checking everyone's income from maintenance every month or even every year far outweighs the 'extra' benefits paid to a few people.

How much is her rent? Most of the UC will be for her rent.

I certainly don’t feel envious. Imagine being so reliant on the goodwill of a man from whom you’ve separated and the government. It’s a very precarious position to be in.

Respectfully, I also disagree. CM is payable up to 21 if the child is in further education

https://www.gov.uk/child-maintenance-service

The FSM has been changed as it had to be renewed every year and that led to many, many children going without lunch at school, for weeks or months on end. FSM used to be only available to people solely on IS, but as its now accepted for the 5 years children are in education (the parents have to be in receipt of UC the whole 5 years) parents can get away with working and still receiving FSM, as long as they weren’t working or on very low income when they applied. I used to work in school canteens, and you’ll be surprised how many children still spend all day at school with no lunch.