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?

I was one who benefited from this. Assumed the Government just capitulated to the non-resident parent who didn’t pay child maintenance. Resident parent who received benefits and reliable child maintenance in the minority.

There are so few men out there paying that amount. Most single mothers end up at the whims of their ex, they can stop/reduce payments for insane reasons.

I don't think taking away a single mother's safety net is going to save the economy a fortune.

Yes I've long said it's ridiculous.
Two parents able to pay for their kids between them and dad willing to pay yet the state pays again. There should be some system where the maintenance is paid or deducted from NRP's earnings and recouped from benefits so that the RP is protected in the event of the CM not being paid. I'm amazed the current system has been allowed to continue for so long.

Also -

£900 - money she works for
£1,400 - money the state will give her as a lone parent as they acknowledge that £900 isn't enough to raise a family
£1,200 - money her ex is paying her to bridge the gap in the nights he has the children compared to what he should be having them.

The 1400 won't be forever as the state will expect her to work more hours as the kids grow

The 1200 won't be forever as the ex may insist on a 50/50 arrangement (money goes), or he loses his job (money goes) or he goes part time (money reduces) or he has more kids (money reduces).

And it sounds like she is in rented accommodation, so housing is not reliable. Nor will she be putting anything into a pension which is awful too.

Yet you seem to think she's rolling in it.

THIS!!!

Over half don't pay or don't pay the full amount.

OVER HALF. Why is the question about the very few women who are doing well, instead of the 50% of men who are depriving their children FFS?

Utter misogynist arseholery.

It's not so much a loophole as a policy failure - the reason it isn't included in benefits calculations is because collection rates are so low that children were living in poverty. And that's before the days of the all-in-one benefit that is universal credit - if the money was deducted now, and maintenance not paid, children would become homeless. It isn't worth having a whole new different policy for the vanishingly few people in your sister's situation.

Presumably she'll be able to buy another property at some point and then her housing costs won't be paid any more.

Presumably with 12.5k income a month she will have savings over 16k so would not be able to claim UC. Unless she is a very big spender of course !

I believe she’s not allowed to save it.. though if she put it in the children’s account boom she has no savings.

Exactly.

I think citing these very rare cases is is a distraction from the actual issue: thousands of fathers don't pay a penny.

Plus if she's part time she will be getting hassle to up her hours if children at school I should think?

Someone linked on another thread recently research which shows that if all separated fathers paid the CMS amount they should be paying, 70% of children living under the poverty line would move above it.

Ultimately, there are enough absent fathers underpaying the amount they should be paying, to put significant numbers of children into poverty.

Also, if it's not spent or specifically kept aside in an account in the childrens names, then it will be considered Capital and can lead to a reduction in UC.

There’s been a few of these threads recently and in case it is politics testing the water - it would be absolutely outrageous if this was allowed to be the focus of any reform to CMs

Focus on the non payers and the complete lack of political will for CMS to use their powers.

Once you’ve you’ve got all the non paying NRP’s paying, or knocking about having had a charge put on their house or their driving licence/passport removed then, and only then, can you start thinking about minority cases like this.

If she saves over 6000 it will reduce, so either that's the amount needed to maintain their lifestyle (which is the point of CM, to try to maintain some consistency for the children where they don't have to completely change their whole lifestyle after separation), or if its more than needed it will reduce her payments if she saves money.
If her DH is paying that amount then it's still going to be a huge change as he must be a very high earner.
It's would be ridiculous to make every single parent live on the same tiny amount based on a choice they often haven't made, if they waited to be financially secure with a partner before having children they shouldn't then be thrown into poverty.

I'm sure the tiny number of women benefitting costs the government less than the administration of a more complex, linked system.

Imagine the workload of people:

• checking he pays
• processing a higher level of UC when he doesn't, in time that the woman can pay her rent/bills
• getting the money back from her if he does pay
• checking the dad isn't paying in cash to maximise the benefits she gets
• keeping an eye on every self employed man
• keeping abreast of all court applications
• putting together a payment plan for any woman who gets back dates CMS, to make sure a man doesn't play with it to get her in the shit

Etc.

If she had £16k savings though, she wouldn't get anything.

It is surely very unusual for someone to have been in a relationship with such a high earner and not to have accrued more than £16k of savings (Well - £32k split in half) in that time?

yes i remember these days.

Women on income support would be penalised if their ex partners paid child support so the women weren't any better off. Some men just used to pay it in cash anyway

That's shocking. If anyone can track down the research I'd like to have a link.

That is an insane monthly income!! I am genuinely shocked at how much it is.

Systems like this cost more to administrate than they save in monies not paid out.

Means testing is very expensive and up to date systems like this need constant maintenance. It's cheaper overall to just let the very few women who benefit from this keep the cash than test entitlement for every single woman claiming child benefit.

The three options are

1. Count it as income, shitty men use this to financially abuse their partners and push women and children into poverty
2. Don't count it as income. A small number of women with wealthy ex partners benefit from this - but the money is meant for the kids anyway and the kids should benefit from having a wealthy father. They would if their parents were still together.
3. Means test it - this costs more and means there is less money to go around for everyone else.

Options one and three have negative outcomes. Option 2 might seem unfair in a small number of cases but is the best of the bunch. Changing things might "solve" this problem but would introduce a whole bunch of worse ones.

This as well.

For the policy dickheads...

Start aggressively pursuing non-paying NRPs. Take their licences, garnish their wages, stop the self-employed batshittery.

Treat debt to RPs like you treat tax evasion and child neglect. Throw money and resources at this. DON'T send more women and children into poverty and all the awful things that entails, including staying in abusive relationships. That kills women and children.

Do your jobs, politicians.

CM does not count, as does money gifts. Neither are an income, and will not be treated as such.

My DM sent me a large sum recently to help with a vet bill. It was of no interest to DWP, and why would it be?

DLA/PIP is also not counted as income.

Child maintenance is to support the children not the mother

And many also get benefits to support the children ( the child element of UC). Why should it be paid through benefits as well when the NRP is paying?

Why does this sort of thing keep coming up? The amount of mums who actually receive ££££ in maintenance are tiny, the amount of single mums who receive any £££ in maintenance are also tiny, but yeah, let’s think of a way we can take that off of them eh, rather than spending time and effort raging at all the exs not paying (I’ve one of those) let’s find another way to stick the boot into women.

Honestly I despair at society’s attitude to things. God forbid any single mother have more than two pennies to run together.

Also UC can’t generally get the most basic things right, can you imagine the carnage if they took what you got off Benefits? The weeks of waiting whilst a decision maker decided if you didn’t get your maintenance, or even better, your ex not paying, claiming you asked for it in cash! Imagine how long that would take to be sorted.

Stop looking to bash other women, start looking to make all men pay for their kids first!

And in the example of kyle walker the cms system won’t see his payments anyway as it’s via a court order due to the amount they don’t see the cases over a set value. So those people getting court ordered maintenance should certainly not be eligible for state benefits due to the sheer amount being over a full uc amount anyway.