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?

Ah, I was told 16.

CM stops at 16 unless the child is in approved education. Then it can continue until 20 or until the July, November or February that the education ends.

Education needs to be full time (more than 12 hours a week. It includes: Alevels, NVQ up to level 3, Scottish Highers,some apprenticeship and Home education if it started before 16 or the child has SEN.

Yabu not to know we've already tried linking benefits with maintenance, and failed. You need a child maintenance service with some teeth for that, and we don't.

Yes and the CMS would need to work with UC to report the amounts like employers do so that adjustments can be made in real time

You can’t be serious?

I think the point is that it is hard to see how the country is going to be financially fine if the state is supporting people to this extent.

This , or suddenly stop paying any leaving the mother with nothing. It may seem unfair to you but I agree with this one, it should be separate.

They would have to. UC is a s**t-show at the best of times! They would break if they had to do anything else.

Exactly. An abuser's charter.

I've been saying for years that CMS paid by the NRP should be a debt to the state.

So, the state calculates the figure and that is owed. The RP receives that figure each month, regardless, as part of UC, which enables the correct calculation of government support on top. If the NRP wants to make extra contributions, they still can.

If the NRP pays, either via direct debit or wider use of collection via PAYE like student loans etc, all good.

But if they don't, it's now a state debt and treated accordingly. I'd welcome much more aggressive investigation where income and lifestyle don't match, too.

The current system is a huge drain on public funds just to enable feckless parents and changing it would, honestly, do more than helping plug our financial gaps. No more free passes, people, if you have a child, you're either avoiding working forever - and still having a portion of your benefits stopped - paying for the child or trashing your credit rating and eventually going to jail for non-payment.

The proven reality is that the savings the state would make in reduced UC payments is dwarfed by the increased admin costs of having to continually adjust those payments to account for unreliable child maintenance payers.

Ignoring CM payments for UC calculations saves the state money overall.

It's kind of penalising people on benefits - I do agree to some extent but she is claiming what she should, child maintenance is additional. If they took benefits off her due to CM she would be no better off than a single parent who doesn't get any child maintenance. So what would be the point in trying to get absent parents to pay it if the government will just make up the shortfall. Not sure if I have explained myself very clearly.

I also take it that she has to pay rent and bills from this total?

Yes this is correct. If all absent parents had to pay for their children in this way it would save the rest of us a huge amount.

The state always pays the correct maintenance to the RP. This maintenance is based on the basic amounts needed to raise a child regardless of how much money the NRP actually has. The NRP then pays the state exactly as if it were council tax or other sum owed to the government.

If the NRP can't pay then they have to claim a benefit to cover or partly cover the cost of their non payments with their savings and their household income taken into account in the usual way.

So we need to change the system. I think it was a huge mistake to say. Look we have this problem where absent parents aren't paying and children are suffering. I know rather than making them pay, the taxpayer should instead.

Added bonus would be for women who earn too much to get UC who could look forward to actually getting a financial contribution from their children's fathers.

It must be pretty unusual to split up from a high earner and not come away with enough assets to not be on UC - so I can only imagine this situation is temporary waiting for a financial order.

CMS is for children - so they don't have too much of a drop in lifestyle because of choices their parents make - so that might support a mother to be at home for a while and not live on the breadline, seems reasonable.

But this is in the context of underfunded schools, a crumbling NHS and huge national debts. Are we really saying that allowing the children of wealthy parents (or at any rate wealthy fathers) not to have a change in lifestyle after divorce should be a priority?

OP says partner rather than husband, so that may be our explanation.

The area is a minefield. When I found myself as a single parent 12 years ago, if I’m honest I was amazed at how much I was entitled to. (Unlike when my mum left my dad 2 decades earlier where she received no support and had to work her but off). I had been a stay at home mum and used to a comfortable life (not flash just normal). I got a part time job, received what was then tax credits and my ex paid me child maintenance (quite a generous amount as he was a high earner, but money still wasn’t abundant and I had a mortgage to pay etc) Now for many people (and I watched it happen around me) single mums plodded along with little foresight and planning as to what would happen financially once the children had grown up. I realised that was a grim future and took the time to professsimally better myself, sit exams and I now run my own business and am financially independent. I did remarry, but I had still come to a point where I was financially independent before hand and continue to be so. Big mistake being financially reliant on a man I learnt the hard way.
I don’t know what the answer is to the benefits system, I certainly however do not think dads maintenance payments should be deducted from from benefits paid, but maybe more in place to help women better themself to stand on their own two feet In the future.

I have not read the full thread, but I think the OP is being unreasonable, because while there will be a few women with very wealthy ex-husbands, the majority of men will not be so well off. The govt does actually understand that if you give mothers (and it is mostly mothers) money, they will spend it on the DC. Previously, where the RP lost money if they received too much maintenance, many a father decided that it was pointless to pay as it simply cost their ex-partner money - and one point of paying maintenance is to encourage parental responsibility. If the children benefit, why should the mother lose money? My ex can hardly have been the only father to give up work rather than contribute - if the money were simply lost to the state, many more fathers would find ways of not paying.

They could take the CM off benefits as a %, as they do if there are any additional earnings and/or as a cap.

A lad i know, got 3 days labouring on a building site, he told DWP and they took 60% of his earnings off his UC, as he said "no incentive to work or be honest"

I'm friends with a woman with 2 children, has a monthly income of £2.4k per month, inc CT support, UC and CM... if she was to work, she'd need to be earning over £40k a year.

She has zero incentive to work and acknowledges this, her kids are at school 7 hours a day, she is sitting around at home and piling on the pounds, so is now trying to get weight loss drugs on the NHS.

We haven't the money to sustain this anymore.

Very naive to think mothers will spend it on their children, some will, some wont.

You don't know that, in my example, its spent on booze, fags and food and a nice holiday, without kids over xmas.

Two reasons :

1. It's unreliable. The NRP can change/quit jobs, fiddle their accounts, change amounts/not pay on a whim etc.

1. It doesn't count as income in certain situations-like getting a mortgage (due to it being unreliable) or if accepted it's only in part.

No. What we are saying is that the parent who stays shouldn't be having to forgo the basics in life and bring up their children in poverty whilst struggling to improve their own lot because of the cost and availability of suitable childcare.

And have a think about what you just said. What if your DH walks away today, takes up self employment and never pays a penny again. That's been my 15 year reality. I am buggered when it comes to old age and pension and my house is falling down around my ears right now.

The government will be coming for it. Those high earners don’t need benefits. If they culled the WFA on the basis of millionaire pensioners, they’re coming for other benefits where a certain demographic aren’t deemed to ‘need’ it either.

This isn’t correct. I used my child maintenance payments, along with my benefits payments (at the time tax credits) and my part time earnings to obtain a mortgage to buy my ex out of my home. The mortgage company prefer it to be court ordered, mine wasn’t but they accepted a letter from my husband confirming payments he would make and evidence of them being paid. This is of course all down to the individual lender. At the time my lender I was with HSBC wouldn’t entertain, however Nationwide were understanding and gave me a mortgage under these circumstances.