Child Benefit Rival Claim Ex Partner Earning Loads!!!!!

[ProlongedAffair]

Me and my ex share 50/50 of our two children, it’s not court ordered but has been in place for the past few years. A few months ago I put in a claim for CMS and was awarded it, they see me as the primary carer because I get both children’s child benefits. I also discovered my ex is earning a 6 figure salary.

Last week I got a letter from child benefit saying that he is challenging my claim. I said to the lady that he earns too much to claim and I suspect he’s only claiming so he can try to get out of CMS. She told me that because he has the children for half the time and child benefit isn’t means tested, the likelihood is they will award child benefit one each! Surely that can’t be correct, can anyone advise who has been through their rival claims process?? He will then be able to claim CMS from me!!

So - can you still just drop the case??

CMS always allow people to open a case if you claim to be the main carer. The other parent then has to go through the nonsense of proving otherwise. When he wins, of course he won’t pay anything voluntarily after what you’ve tried to pull. You may be lucky and they award a nominal sum, but most likely is that you will lose. And you will also lose one of the child benefit claims. That’s what you get for being greedy and deceitful.

Because I don’t know whether CB or CMS operate differently or have the same criteria for what constitutes equal care.

i can close the CMS case at any time but he won’t be giving me any money now

CMS does see me as the primary carer. When I opened the case, they deemed me the resident parent and I’ve been receiving money. He’s now taking this to court (CMS Tribunal), so I’m asking whether a judge will see it differently!

You do realise that no matter how many times, and different ways, you ask the same question you'll get the same answer?

CMS deemed you the resident parent because of the CB and you telling them you were. You were told that he would win his case with CB - which he has.
You've been told umpteen times that he will win his case with CMS.

What are you not grasping?

You're destroying any tiny chance of salvaging any kind of working co-parent relationship with your incessant pushing.

You are not going to win this.

You might as well save yourself the court fees and hassle and close the case.

You will not win. You ignored all of us when we told you months ago that you would lose the child benefit claim; you insisted that you believed you’d win and we told you over and over. We were right. They split the claim.

You will not win CMS. The split child benefit has only helped him. You could have maybe, maybe got them to say you pay each other and you’d get a little as he’d pay more but that’s only if it was CMS over the phone. Now that’s is going through court, they’ll say no CMS due to true 50/50 and the split child benefit.

You will not win, but you will have a lot of stress and hassle. Just close the CMS case and maybe he won’t ask for all his money back.

i can close the CMS case at any time but he won’t be giving me any money now

Can you blame him?

He was allowing you to claim both lots of CB when he was entitled to claim equally and was paying you £300 a month when he didn't need to.

You heard about his payrise and decided you were entitled to more from him and, despite being told numerous times that you weren't, that it was worth destroying your co-parenting relationship over.

You had a great co-parenting relationship and he gave you a decent amount of money to help out when you weren’t entitled to anything.
You got greedy and now you’ve lost one of the child benefits and you’re about to lose the maintenance he was happy to pay. If you make him drag this through court, you will never salvage anything. Close the CMS and apologise but accept that, as the kids are teenagers, he may never speak to you again and will onto be civil when you need to attend events together.

How large does the discrepancy need to be?

What happens when there’s 3 kids?

Even those who earn over the threshold?

How large does the discrepancy need to be?

There has to be a high earner (which is generally over 150k as 156 is CMS income ceiling) and the other income has to be significantly lower.

It goes through court, not CMS though.

In the previous thread it was suggested that the op is on 60k and the ex 100k so not the huge disparity in take home pay that is normally seen in top up cases

In this case do they still look at split of payments? E.g if the higher earner is already paying for more etc?

I really think that the best you can hope for at this point is that he will continue to pay 50% of the children's costs like school uniforms, etc.

No. He just needs to be paying equally for stuff and for things during his time with the to show true 50/50. If he is paying for more stuff than you then that will help him.

He isn’t high earner enough for them to still award you, and you earn a decent amount so there isn’t a big enough disparity.

You’re not going to win this. Just like we told you that you wouldn’t win the child benefit fight.

My understanding is that your ex is earning below £156k. If that is the case, there’s no point trying to find a loophole of who pays for what that would apply to you.

@ProlongedAffair

I'm genuinely interested in the final outcome of this CMS claim. Please open another thread when this reaches 40 pages.

In this case do they still look at split of payments? E.g if the higher earner is already paying for more etc?

Courts look at everything.

However, it's really only applicable when there's someone who is earning over the CMS ceiling amount and you'd already know that.

It's not a loophole that's going to help you. Especially as your ex currently has been having the children more than you.

It's for cases where, for example, someone is on minimum wage and the other party is on 200/300k a year. One case I know of was a school staff member and a professional footballer on 50k a week.

You need to drop your case instead of causing further animosity.

Why are you even doing this?

You say your DC are teenagers. Why ruin the relationship between you and your ex for the sake of a few years of payments? He won’t be paying anything to you at all soon enough.
Sounds like he pulls his weight tbh, you should be thankful that your DC have such a good dad instead of being a grifter.

Do you feel your children go without because he doesn’t pay cms? Or is it that you feel somewhat entitled to part of his earnings?

Before the thread fills, I feel it's really important to discover what the hell OP does for a living.

Because to be this thick, on the purported £65k she says she's on, is astonishing.

I will be directing my teenager there for a job immediately!

On the one hand I can’t believe this thread is real

On the other hand it’s such a niche situation, with so much detail about the specifics of the case, that it has to be real

Your poor kids weddings are going to give them anxiety now in the future due to you and your greed causing so much upset with their Dad. Infact as they get older I'm sure they will have a very low opinion of you for this as me and my siblings do for my mum and her greed with maintenance when we were growing up.

Yup. My DH’s ex made up income - which resulted in huge four figure arrears which CMS said should be paid in two instalments.

I had to send a plethora of financial information to prove a negative - that this income did not exist. It took them 5 months to reconsider, in which time my DH had to pay the inflated rate based on the fictional income otherwise they’d go to collect and pay. I got an apology over the phone, but it all took a very long time. Ultimately CMS didn’t understand the information I was sending.

I dont understand how her ex has gone to tribunal already without having first exhausted the complaints process.

Why didn't your husband sort it out