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?

Your sister is lucky her ex is a high earner and not hiding it. The majority get next to nothing from child maintenance and if they have more children in the future the little they pay is further reduced as I have just found out.

In order for her to get £1200 CM a year, he will be earning around £140,000 a year. Your sisters' situation is rare and a bit of an outlier. UC will be pushing her to work and get off benefits.

I agree, OP. It should be taken into account as it is regular money coming in.
With regards to this:
'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.'

They should change the way it is being checked or assessed. Not on what is due or promised but actual past 6 months or so money showing paid on bank statements.

Also if her money accumulates, will she be getting the same benefits if her saving accounts are over a certain amount?
Does she qualify for these benefits even though she already has savings/ assets?

Going back to the old system of deducting CM from benefits will create new problems like high earners paying up to the threshold and the rest in cash, up to the threshold and knowing that their ex won’t contact CMS because they’ll end up with less benefits.
High earners should pay more than medium and low earners and as the NRP’s wages rise, they should pay more Child Maintenance if they have the child less than 50%. The policy of benefits being deducted could easily become a charter for NRP to have a maximum ceiling of payment because the RP would prefer a regular payment from DWP over a payment from their ex that may or may not happen. CMS have cases where the RP are owed tens of thousands and they simply ask the RP to write off the debt once the child is 18 so their figures look better.
Your sister is an unusual anomaly to the problem. There’s a tiny percentage of dads paying 1200 because only a tiny percentage of people are on 6 figures. Closing that loophole won’t improve children’s lives in the same way as closing more serious loopholes like self employment loopholes.

The OP’s sister’s case is seemly just under the court limit.

The maximum CMS will award for one child is just under £1300 a month as that’s what it would be on £3000 a week income and that’s the max they’ll deal with.

Given the tinkering that Labour have been doing regarding "who gets what" I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is a "testing the waters" post, because as other posters have pointed out, women in the position of the OPs sister are a small minority.

Like the generations of workshy families with goats and plasma TVs that are regularly referenced by tabloids and on here to get people frothing at each other rather than looking at how politicians waste money and shuffle it amongst themselves and their corporate chums.

Dangerous games are being played in the higher echelons while people go cold and hungry and lack secure employment and housing.

I hope the government doesn't blunder into making a system that is already hardly working even worse and screw over yet another bunch of kids. And their parents potentially, although mostly it will be women / mothers.

What amount would you be happy with your sister receiving, just enough to stop her from going under?

Logistically this would be easy to implement. They had me inputting my self-employed income monthly and adjusted benefits accordingly, so why not the same for child maintenance? And they could make it so it has to be traceable (ie not cash) so that fathers can’t just lie and say they’ve paid.

My sister admits herself that she is shocked and it is not fair. I don’t think the tax payer should be paying full benefits in my sister’s situation (she would agree and didn’t think this would be the case). Not every man is a shit who doesn’t want to pay. There will be cases like my sister who are getting more than a families monthly wages in maintenance, part time wages and then top ups from the tax payer.

I actually was thinking it’s more a potential attack ploy from the Tories - “they’re attacking the hard working farmers but you’ve got single mum raking it in it in benefits and thousands in maintenance”

CMS needs a massive reform and everyone has avoided it for years and years as it’s going to be a nightmare. If I was a politician I’d be trying to make it a hot football for the other side so they were the ones having to tackle it.

You should be angry her ex is only using 16% of his income to support his own children when he’s on such a high salary. Roughly calculated he’s on about 90k and she’ll have 42k with 2 dc to look after. Why isn’t he supporting his own children?

I think there should be a set amount (£500 for example), then for every £1 of maintenance above that, 50p is taken from the benefits. Something like that. Otherwise you end up with situations like my sister, who has an income of almost £4,000 a month, a massive percentage of which is made up from the tax payer and none of which she pays tax on.

You know she doesn't have to claim it if she feels it's so unfair.

And they could make it so it has to be traceable (ie not cash)

Sadly, we don't live in a police state and so people can do as they please with their cash.

Bummer eh.

The absolute shit show that is UC could not be relied on for varying amounts of child maintenance. If a father didn’t pay one month, the adjustment to UC doesn’t happen automatically and within the same time frame. You could have somebody like your sister who then who was living within her means, to then find one month she is down £1200. It might correct itself the following month but that often isn’t very helpful when you have bills that can’t be paid that month.

Actually UC can demand your bank statements and refuse to pay if you refuse to hand them over. So any iffy constant payments in can be flagged or lack of spending too.

It worked when I was self employed with a varying income, how is this not the same?

There will be cases like my sister who are getting more than a families monthly wages in maintenance, part time wages and then top ups from the tax payer.

They are a tiny minority of cases.

And similar to the fact there are a few millionaire diabetics and cancer patients who don’t need free prescriptions it’s more cost effective for the country to base policy on the majority. Not the very tiny minority.

But honestly how many people would that affect? Just read the responses on here where the partner pays nothing and reduces their salary to pay nothing. Don’t you want your niece/nephew to be better off rather than worse off? Think of the child and not the adults.

Given the fact that the Govt had to write off some £1.3 billion in unpaid child support, why aren't you focussed on fixing that broken system and making men pay before you penalise mothers?

Cm is so the father spends a portion of his income on them, benefits is a separate thing. Shouldn't be penalised for claiming cm, regardless of the amount, bear in mind the paying parent could lose their jo at any time thus stopping the payments of which the parent with care has zero control over

I think that this has potential to protect women from financial abuse... as the lower earner or SAHM. You can't assume the other partner is supportive.. you'll put children at risk of poverty

I think what op is saying the xdh is paying child maintenance which part of this is to pay towards housing the child then her sister gets benefits to cover this cost that the cms already covers

yes sister seems to be on a winner but she will be one of a very small minority of people in this position
and things like this would cost more to administer than save

So my that will include rent, once her divorce is finalised I suspect her savings will be over the £16k cap!

She needs a two/three bed home to house her children. Some of the benefits will be to enable her to pay rent on a home big enough to house her and her children.

The 1,200 from the ex is to contribute towards the additional heating, hot water, food, clothing, toys and books, that the OPs sister will have to purchase- some of which she is paying for because her ex is not having the children half the time.

It is a scandal that so many can shirk, but by the same token, the system should be agile enough to upload information and it be updated automatically. It should not take weeks or months for changes to be processed.