Fucking fuming - child maintenance review

[aremenreallysuchcunts]

Got child maintenance review today. DC dad declared he earned £13,248 last financial year. He claims he works 6 days a week and is always late picking dc up due to work and works every weekend even the Saturdays he has dc. He owes £1254 in arrears via the cms and £2500 from before I applied to the cms (obviously I have written that off) so now I get the princely sum of £29.30 a week but not before cms have taken their 4%.
is this a joke? How do men like this have no shame? I know there is nothing to be done I am just venting. I have never included his money in my budget thank god but that doesn’t mean I don’t need it! I work full time and I work hard but why do men think this is ok? Why do the girlfriends think this is ok? Why do the father’s parents think this is ok? I have 3 boys and no way would I be congratulating them on avoiding maintenance.
Oh, and he’s a plasterer 🤣
Fucking patriarchy.

Bastards think they're hurting their exes when they should want to take care of their children.

She’s a carer for her ds who is autistic and she has mh issues so she doesn’t work

When a paying parent is employed, CMS look at his / her tax record - they get that from HMRC.

The issue is with men (or women) who leave their employment to avoid paying, or who become self-employed and don’t declare all their income / assets (like houses that they’re getting rental income from).

CMS can only see what’s on their self-assessment form - the issue is at HMRC. HMRC need to be doing a lot more to crack down on this - and not just because of CMS. Someone who isn’t declaring income isn’t paying tax that they should be - and that affects all of us.

I wish you could, but you need proof of earnings.

I never got a single penny out of my ex for our ds. He saw him maybe twice a year until I put a stop to that. Honestly my advice is that women should not have children they can't afford to raise alone. That's obviously not the way it should be, just that I know it often ends up, no matter how much you don't expect it, so you have to be ready to deal with it and not feel embittered or angry to the extent it dominates your life. Believe me I know how wrong it is that I think like this but it's the way I protected myself.

That is so disgusting. In Spain for someone earning 1500 p/m it's 250 per child per month. If they are earning closer to 3000 it's between 400-500 per month per child. If they don't pay its deducted from their salary before they receive it, plus a fine! If they still don't pay and eventually get a custodial sentence it's taken integrally from their benefits, even if that leaves them with 0!

Mine avoided paying any for nearly 3 years saying he didn't even earn enough through self employment to pay tax. I asked CMS to investigate. He had physical assets in cars, watches and other items. He had rolls of cash and simply went off the books. He told me that the Child Benefit I received should cover what was needed. I complained to CMS who said I should view his contributions as "optional". I was fuming.

He said before paying anything he wanted a breakdown of what I spent the money I earned on saying that I was only intending to spend "his" money on myself, not the children. The sheer gall of it.

I sometimes felt like the whole CMS journey was itself traumatising. Their inability to be able to enforce anything, investigate anything undeclared, suggest that his financial support was an optional extra was extremely upsetting.

Admittedly haven’t read the whole thread but my ex was like this. Owned his own business and declared the absolute bare minimum and then got paid in cash for everything else. Paid £200 a month and then sold up the business - which he said wasn’t worth anything - and then fucked off to live in the USA with one of the top earning women in the country and owns 3 huge houses, each one worth millions. Dd is 22 now and thinks he’s an absolute arsehole. He has two more dc now (much younger) who he’s paid to go to private school, holidays to Mexico and Disney etc etc. Men like this have no shame.

👏🏻 exactly this.
My ex is small fry - I think he is ‘only’ under declaring by 1500-2000 a month. He can easily hide that without his lifestyle drawing suspicion. Especially when his family are backing him.
A few takeaways a week for dinner, extras in the supermarket shop each week, nights out, weekends away, extra tobacco, days out with his step kids when he doesn’t have dc - all spent with cash that nobody has ever seen.

Perhaps CMS and a related department in HMRC should be entirely staffed by women who have experienced their ex partners wriggling out of paying appropriately for their children.

Contact your MP. No, you absolutely shouldn’t have to - but CMS will prioritise an MP complaint.

get on to your MP and local political parties and keep going on.
Campaign
MN has been good at this kind of thing in the past, the Let Toys Be Toys thing started here.

I'd vote for a party that would introuduce wage garnishing and asset confiscation for deadbeat parents

When it was csa I got £13 a week for 3 dc. When cms took over I didn't even bother making a claim.
Dc are now 16, 18 and 19. Haven't had a penny since the youngest was 1...

All I can say is it's absolutely shit OP. I have been with my DP 30 years since I was 18. The only real fight I have had with him was a workmate of him doing exactly this. 2 children by one women, then fucking off with a younger Eastern European lady to live it up. Bringing the children presents twice a year. It took a while but they no longer speak. I have never interfered in his friendships before or after, but this man's lies and dishonestly really got on my goat.

I'd love to know what the impact is on the adult relationships between children who have lived without appropriate payments from their fathers and those fathers.

I’m so sorry, it’s beyond me how men can do this. The CM is for his children. I earn way more than my husband, and if we ever split and I hated his guts, I would willingly pay CM and then some to help him provide adequately for our kids.
A plasterer working 6 days a week is absolutely raking it in. I don’t know how he lives with himself.

I’m going to try. I am sick of this. I will go public if I have to. It is a disgrace and I have had enough.

I’m genuinely so sorry you went through that. You’re not the first person I’ve heard describe CMS as traumatic. If your children’s parent won’t pay to feed and house them, the absolute least you should be able to expect is effective support from the welfare state.

Dc haven't seen dc since youngest was a few months old. His choice..
Hope it haunts him until his last breath
.

I'm not sure women are any better, I posted on a group asking if anyone else didn't get any maintenance and lots of women talking about how they don't want maintenance and happy to say they raised their child without it so they can say they did it all by themselves so I should do the same 🤷🏻‍♀️ I'd prefer Men to be held accountable personally

I kind of think “clean break” should be back on as an option.

rather than try and split houses and assets 50:50 let the parent with care use the asset value to effectively get Child support up front.

so if you have a 350k home, sign it over to the RP completely, and take the 175k as CM in lieu. Then RP doesn’t have to buy out and mortgage is more affordable, and nrp has a better chance to get their own mortgage without monthly payment.

£500 a month for 18 years is 108k.

Maybe I have been lucky but whenever I have ~ranted~ spoken to the cms I have spoken to wonderful people who have admitted how frustrating they find it all, that I am not alone and they wish they could do more.

Report him directly to HMRC for non payment of tax. Or tell him you will do this unless he coughs up.
Post on his business facebook page.
if he advertises through any apps such as my builder.com then contact them.
Do you think he earns about the VAT threshold? Dodging VAT is a serious matter.

CMS do take money from wages and they do confiscate assets. The issue is proving someone has assets / can afford to pay. The whole system needs an overhaul and there currently isn’t the money in govt for that.

It’s not right and it’s not fair.

Dd (22) wants absolutely nothing to do with her dad. Ignores any texts etc. Totally blanks him as if he doesn’t exist now. The only difficulty is his parents think the sun shines out of his backside and regularly try to get dd to speak to him (he lives in the states) but dd says no, and now tells them she wants a relationship with them, but not him.