Child Maintenance-Should fathers on benefits pay more?

[CalmGreenWasp]

My ExP owns his home outright, receives in excess of £1,200/month in disability benefits and works cash in hand. His only outgoings are food and utility bills for himself. Is it fair that he only pays £7.00/week maintenance for our DD10? For context, I am a lone parent and own a mortgaged home. I slightly exceed the threshold for universal credit. My disposable household income after mortgage and bills equates to half his, but with two people to support. Is the system broke? Should disposable income be considered by CMS when paying parent is in receipt of benefits?

I’m not claiming it because it is such a paltry sum. I know it’s not, but really it should be. Protect the disabled but let the children suffer, in a population with declining birth rates. How does this make sense?

Because a declining birth rate is preferable to voters than more people being reliant on the state.

And what happens with taxes in the future when there are less economically feasible people to share the collective burden?

Also this.

People can have a very skewed view of benefits. "Oh, you only get xyz, how can you possibly live on that?"

Conveniently ignoring they get 85% of all childcare paid as well. Their housing. That's thousands and thousands. Council tax, paid. Free school meals. Free summer holiday childcare camps. Free uniform. Lower rate utilities. Fuel vouchers. Food vouchers. Crisis money from the council. Grants for this and that. And let's not forget this is frequently doing zero work, or part time hours.

Yet someone working full time and taking hime £350 a month more, has all the stress of a full time job but not the access to all the "non payables" list.

It's completely disingenuous to say that the working person is better off because their income is higher, as that's not where the "income " actually lies - when you add all the paid expenses back to the benefit income, it's there.

Yes- the difference between 3 and 4 nights a week in terms of what you have to provide (bedroom, uniform, clothes, food, toys) is miniscule.

It really isn’t, especially if any of the three days are days that the NRP doesn’t work and so doesn’t need to pay for childcare.

It's up to both parents to determine a schedule which works around their work patterns but one extra day is really not a big difference. A parent having their child 3 days a week shouldn't be considered an NRP.

The whole system needs an overhaul.

The government needs to set a bare minimum amount that needs to be contributed by NRPs depending on how many nights they have them. This can go up with wages but doesn’t go down below the minimum, even if the NRP isn’t working / is on benefits.

If the NRP stops contributing then the debt accumulates and the DWP can request proof of how much money the NRP has in savings etc. This can be reviewed yearly. They already do this for UC claimants. If debt has accumulated to a certain amount then they have the power to seize assets or force house sales in some circumstances. Eventually money can be deducted from pensions or the estate if the person dies.

Sounds harsh but children don’t stop needing school uniform, food and a roof over their heads just because one parent isn’t working, even if it is for a legitimate reason. As the resident parent I have no choice but to find the money for the things my children need and that would remain the case if I lost my job or became disabled etc.

In reality most of the extreme measures won’t be needed because the threat of the above will be enough to focus the NRP’s mind into providing the money somehow.

Child maintenance needs to be treated as a priority debt and until that happens nothing will change.

I agree he should pay more. I'm the kind of person where the system would work in my favour if I claimed benefits, but it's not right. My earnings pre-tax last year were £22k. But I own my home outright, have around £1k of disposable income a month, and around £10k in savings. Yet if you base it on income I often find they say I'm on a lower income, and they expect housing costs when I don't have them. UC at least now does count savings, tax credit didn't.

@Cockerpoomom I don't get PIP and don't know all the rules around it, but I have an Access To Work grant which has helped me to work more (and more productively), so I'm now paying tax. It's all really to cover the expense of getting rid of barriers, eg in my case they pay for software that reads documents to me, or I can audibly write out quotes or meeting minutes

Ask people if they’d rather have more money in their pocket now, or put it towards the future collective burden.

If there were any votes in changing maintenance, they would have done it years ago.