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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Lack of transparancy re: child maintenance calculations

3 replies

MissyMooPoo2 · 02/12/2025 13:32

When my husband and I split ten years ago, he set up regular child maintenance payments based on his own calculations entered at https://www.gov.uk/calculate-child-maintenance.

Since that time, there has been only a very small increase (about £9 per month) on the two occasions (2018 and 2022) that I've asked him to redo the calculations to make sure these are up to date. At my request in 2022, he did provide a current payslip, and I could see that out of a monthly salary of around £6k, he is paying about £300 to a pension and £800 in car salary sacrifice, meaning about £5000 is taken into consideration for maintenance purposes. And when you enter this figure, the amount that he pays is correct (assuming he has my daughter for the 1-2 nights per week stated, which he actually falls slightly under. I haven't contested this as I would rather she was with me anyway).

It seems very odd to me that his salary has gone up only very slightly in a decade... he's very career and reward-focused. I am suspicious that he is diverting income, or obtaining bonuses or other alternatives to actual pay rises that don't show up on his regular payslips.

AIBU to expect the completed gov.uk form to be accompanied by a P60 and for this to be completed each year?

I am very tempted to suggest CMS to him but don't want to sour the very little goodwill that is left for my daughter's sake.

Calculate your child maintenance

Use this calculator to work out an amount of child maintenance for your children.

https://www.gov.uk/calculate-child-maintenance.

OP posts:
Mandylovescandy · 02/12/2025 13:37

Where does he work? My salary will barely go up over the next few years as I have reached the top band and even getting increments within that is very challenging. I obviously have no idea if he is hiding bonuses etc but just saying it is possible that his salary hasn't gone up much

fedupposter · 02/12/2025 13:39

You must be receiving around £1000 a month already on that salary if he has the children every other weekend. How often does he have them?

MissyMooPoo2 · 02/12/2025 13:42

fedupposter · 02/12/2025 13:39

You must be receiving around £1000 a month already on that salary if he has the children every other weekend. How often does he have them?

No - £470 a month! So it really doesn't add up to me.

Edited to note he has our one daughter usually for 2 nights (Fri and Sat) every other week but he sometimes drops the Friday due to other committments.

OP posts:
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