Maintenance Payments Ending

[Hula0565890]

The spousal and child maintenance payments between me and my ex are due to end in September as per the court order. From Oct all costs of our kids will then be shared evenly between us.

My ex earns at least 3 times the amount I currently do. AIBU to ask if they will be willing to split the costs more than 50/50 in light of this, appreciating this cannot be enforced?

Why do they need financial support for living costs if they are going to uni?

@Caligirl80 Have you had a child at uni recently? Things have massively changed in recent years.

🤣🤣🤣 You crack me up. Yeah, of course, because if you were going to change the system to make the show-parent contribute more than 10% of their income, you'd change absolutely nothing else. To maintain a fair and sustainable benefits system, there needs to be a middle ground between where it is now and where it was when I was a kid (all maintenance got taken off you). Then maybe we wouldn't be in a position where the most vulnerable people, least able to advocate for themselves, are the fat the government is looking to trim, to "make ends meet" and reduce the benefits bill, while keeping the rich rich 🙄

Wow, you still don't get it at all. What I am getting at is that, where they can blatantly afford to, the other parent should contribute more CM, so that DLA can be reduced, in circumstances where the other parent is able to contribute. Such a reduction in DLA expenditure could then be used to safeguard the benefits of other disabled children and people who have no family support and avoid the crisis we are currently seeing with benefits slashing of the most vulnerable in our society.

Your children will be adults, therefore of course your ex no longer needs to support you financially.
If he’s a good Dad then he will help out his children with uni costs if they ask him. But that money can go to them, it doesn’t need to be paid to you. If he doesn’t want to then that’s up to him. I got a student loan and worked part time so your kids may have to do the same. They will be fine. Not sure what the issue is.

Yes, this is true. Yet, If a parent dies and leaves an amount of life insurance then the surviving parent will not be able to claim benefits even though the dead parent will never be able to contribute any maintenance to help with the costs of raising the children, there is no allowance made. If parents divorce, child maintenance is disregarded for benefits AFAIK. Divorced parents end up much better off as they get their payments monthly.

Can you elaborate please.

For her lifestyle?Can you elaborate?

How do you mean her lifestyle?

DLA is non means tested it doesn't matter how much maintenance you get
And as I said previously maintenance is disregarded for means tested benefit ,s too.

You crack me up to i have a disabled child to with complex needs so I have a rough idea of how much UC you would get on a low wage ,and with the disability element and carers element it's going to be a not insignificant amount along with the DLA ,( which you say you are able to use for therapies well done ,as many families with disabled children can't afford therapies ) and your maintenance i wouldn't be at all surprised if you came out with more then your ex / month .

Seriously, are you a bot? 🤣 You just seem to be repeating the same sentence, over and over.

Nope are you ?
You seem somewhat disingenuous?

So basically, you want DLA to be means tested, so that well-off families with disabled children just have to absorb the extra costs associated with disabilities. I couldn't disagree more, but there we go.

🤣🤣🤣 goodness, you are naive! Maintenance is not counted as income when assessing for benefits, so it wouldn't matter whether DF was paying £400 or £4000 per month, the benefits bill wouldn't change (unless RP put lots in savings, then UC would reduce).

Not naïve at all. I have got fat fingers though. I meant to type could instead of would but can't seem to change it after the event.

What I am getting at is that I don't know any single mother, who is the primary caregiver, whose CM equates to the "50%" OP is alluding to. I then go on to say that if fathers actually did pay 50%, it could pave the way for restructuring of benefits for such families, to achieve the benefits bill savings that the government is currently trying to strip from disabled children and adults.

I feel it's inherently wrong that fathers can get away with not contributing 50% and, in our case, paying 10% or less of their income, and the state, aka the taxpayer, has to pick up the slack.

Frequently, absent fathers do pay around 50% of the costs of the child (more complicated if disabilities are involved, granted). What they don’t have to pay is 50% or more of RP’s costs, which is what’s frequently complained about, because RP largely can’t work FT.

If CMS is less than 10% then he's getting reductions for overnights, which means he also has costs for a bed, clothing and toys.

If you want DLA to be means tested for separated parents, it's going to be means tested for everyone which is completely unfair to disabled people who have significant extra costs but still earn decently, and means that disabled people at higher levels are never going to have the quality of life of their colleagues.

I've done a lot of research into student finance - my DD is just waiting for her A level results and had just been awarded her minimum loan of under £5k. She had to sign an agreement with the Uni of Oxford (for which she has a conditional offer) not to work. A gap year to earn money can be a good thing but we were told BY ACADEMICS AT THE UNI OPEN DAY that it is not well regarded on maths and hard sciences - unless of course it's in industry doing something relevant - obviously it can be absolutely advantageous in languages, social work etc. Also my DH is a university professor and talks to his personal tutees about this all the time. Obviously if your DCs could get a job and do it without affecting their coursework, that has lots of advantages - financially and in terms of personal development- but I know many parents whose kids have applied for many, many jobs with no success. I checked in with my daughter and she confirmed this was the experience of many of her friends.

Oh yeah, no, I do think OP is out of their mind if they think getting 50% isn't enough 🤣 and post 18? I mean, I fully expect to have to support my son the rest of my life and I'm doing the best I can to leave him provided for but once he's 18, I know for a fact his father will be dusting off his hands. Aside from the issues it causes with the benefits bill, there's just something so soul destroying about people doing the bare minimum for their kids, whether out of spite for the other parent or total lack of decency as a parent. Equally, I hate it when the RP (is that residential parent?) expects to be supported themselves. It's about the kids. It should always be about the kids.

Op, I get you. My ex earns at least 4 times as much as I do. I work fulltime.

Eldest dc goes to uni this year. I have said that I cannot give a regular contribution as having her home in holidays will cost me. My second dc finishes school next year and so maintenance will stop there also.

I honestly am really worried how I will survive. Second dc doesn’t want to go to uni so willl get a job and of course I will charge rent etc but depending how much he earns it probably will not be as much as the maintenance I receive.

I get a lot of maintenance but I am living in a house which I can not afford without help. If it were just me I could easily afford my own housing on my salary but I cannot afford to run a family home with the rising costs of living.

I would never have chosen to have 3 kids on my salary alone and had that many because we had a good combined income. Little did I know that he would have an affair.

It’s shit.

Are you still going on? I'm done explaining to you and the last repetition I'm making to you is that my son cannot do overnights away from home. You do you boo.

Come 18 your son will be entitled to PIP and UC in his own right so it won't just be you supporting him
Even you don't have to financially support him once he's an adult if you didn't want to.

I love my son and, until the day I die, I want him to have the best life he can, not just exist on whatever's left of PIP, after it's been ravaged by the current government. I can see we have very different philosophies.