in stopping stepdaughters maintenance payments?

[postmanbob]

namechanged as don't want to be recognised.

DH has a DD(11) from previous relationship and we have 2 DC together, both pre-school age. We have a good relationship with SD and regular contact. My DH has paid maintenance every month without fail since the relationship broke up when SD was still a baby. We met a couple of years after that. Maintenance was agreed between them both and has not been an issue until now.

DH is in the construction industry and we have been hit hard this last year, his job is hanging on a wire and they have been as much as told to take it week by week.

I work very very p/t and my department have had trouble recruiting for a f/t job recently. Anyway, I spoketo my manager, they interviewed me and I have been offered the post. This means my DH will give his notice so he can care for our children. My new job is secure (NHS). The salary will be less than DH and mine but it is secure and we can survive on it.....but we will be unable to make the maintenance payments.

Does this sound dreadful or understandable? We are both very torn on what to do and I have to accept/ decline by Friday. I should add that it will not cause his ex finacial hardship......but I'm sure she will make a big fuss.

have just skimme this thread

if you are utterly certain his ex can afford to manage without his payments then yanbu. i know that in our case, she would be able to manage without anything. I hope he is having a conversation with ex about this and exlaining situation. If he's been paying withut fail for 10 years she should at least be supportive.

Do you still support in other ways - is it just money each month? We pay fees for things like activities and odd bits of clothing/uniform etc and contribute to one offs, like trips and pay for our annual holidays that the kids all ocme on.

If you think his employemnt situation is this dodgy then you seem to be doing what you need to do to protect all your family. And that includes her because if he has no job, house etc then how would he see her? Hopefully this will be a temporary blip and it can get back to normal.

good luck, us steps never get a good press do we??

Must go and feed ds will have to check back later, hope all goes well

Rose: "YABU. Very dubious to reduce maintanance based on possible, rather than actual, job loss".

Okay ..... PMB's DH doesn't know 100% he will lose his job but come on ..... you'd have to have been living in a cave these past 6 months to not know that the construction industry is probably one of the most threatened sectors re: redundancy at present.

In the meantime, PMB has been offered a secure opportunity for which she must apply now ..... not sometime in the future whenever she feels like it.

So what are they supposed to do ? Gamble on DH keeping his job (for how long ?) which I suspect a bookie wouldn't even accept a bet on, and then, say, in a fortnight's time when his job loss is confirmed, it will be too late for PMB to go for that FT NHS job. I'd say that course of action would be grossly irresponsible overall, and has been pointed out, DH will now be able to contribute to his daughter's upbringing in other ways, until he (or PMB) is in a position to earn more.

cantpickyourfamily you've also missed the point that the SD is living in a privileged family, both her mother and stepfather work full time. They have foreign holidays and new everything. Meanwhile the OP's family are struggling to pay double the going rate, they don't have new things and the father's job is so insecure he doesn't know if he's going to it on Monday.

That was a very unfair thing of you to say.

anniemac, I think that's something else people are missing. If the child spends time at the NRP's house then the payments are supposed to be reduced accordingly. I've been confused by some posts that seem to suggest the NRP has the child 60% of the time, that's not an NRP! The mother in that case should be paying for the 10% of time the child spends with the father. But maybe I misunderstood that post.

Well said, Elliegant.

FAQ, I just ignored all the letters from the CSA and eventually they went away. If we get the CSA involved with us then we may as well live together the way it works, and we can't afford that.

Joolyjoolyjoo that has to be one of the best posts I've seen on this thread, you've really surmised the situation well.

Just realised the girl is younger than I thought, I said in one post that the overpayment wouldn't be paid off in three years thinking she was 18, I don't think it would be paid off in 7 years either.

I ignored IS telling me I "HAD" to fill in the forms for the CSA.......then eventually they cut in my IS by 1/2 -so I filled them in - in JULY (giving all his details, NI number, phone numbers, address, date of birth, company he works for etc etc).

in the middle of SEPTEMBER (or was it late September??) they rang me and asked for

His phone number
Where he worked
His address (admittedly he had moved a few weeks before so the old address was wrong - although he has mail re-direction set-up for it...)

3 days later he received the letter with the form to fill in (first he'd heard from them) , and he returned it 3 days after that. They rang me last Saturday to ask if I still wanted to proceed with the claim (like I was going to say no - and let IS cut my benefits)......

So they basically sat around on their arses for 3 1/2 months before doing anything with the bloody claim!!

Yeeesk! I'm on disability so they're not able to stop my money, I guess they figure it's not worth the hassle.

The rules change soon don't they regarding CSA and IS claims? 27 October I think

www.csa.gov.uk/en/about/faq/changes-to-child-support.asp

2008-2009
Parents with care on benefits will no longer be compelled to use the Statutory maintenance scheme (operated by the CSA). They will be able to consider their choices of arrangement through a new information and support service (Child Maintenance Options). By the end of 2008, the £10 per week disregard (presently only available to clients on the current scheme) will be doubled to £20 per week and extended to those who are also on the old scheme.

Whoopee, so soon I won't be not getting £10 per week off ex-h, I won't be not getting £20 instead!

I think it all depends if the other mum is working, and how her earnings compare with yours. She shouldn't be immune to a bit of graft. After all, you wouldn't expect her to pay maintenance towards your children, would you? However these situations are always fraught. I've heard mediation can be really good in situations like this, might prevent problems later on for you all perhaps?

yeah they do change Lurkin - unfortunately as I'm already on IS I can't use the new rules - bit of a bummer really as I'm 99.99% certain that exH and I could very easily worked out a "figure" that he was able to afford (every month) rather than one that he may be able to afford some months, or not at all others... (most of his income is made up from commission/bonuses)

Just be wary that mum doesn't suddenly try and unilaterally change the 'contact' schedule/parenting schedule - as with less o/n stays then the more CSA she will get.

There is supposed to be no link between contact and money (it's not pay-per-view!) but there are situations whereby one parent will for there own selfish financial reasons try and reduce contact to gain a financial leverage.

In that case I would urgently seek advice from your local Families Need Fathers group, also, if you could post a thread on the step-parents thread I'll keep a look out for it too.

If a CSA application is made then the assessment is from that point - you're history of overpayments will NOT be taken into consideration as they will be deemed to be voluntary. The CSA is not interested in that as now they are all about racking up as many targets as possible.

thanks so much for thinking of us and here's the update: well, ex was ok about it according to DH. She said she hasnt even used the maintenance for the last 5 years or so and it has gone straight into a savings account for SD and theres apparently a tidy sum there

DH told her we would pay what we could when we had better idea of a budget e.g. £50mth and ex told him to send that on SD when she is with us instead e.g. on day trips etc

can't tell you how relieved I am that she has been accomodating and reasonable. SD has also turned up with her old playstation for the boys to have - she told me her mum suggested she take it as its not used. I do feel abit like the poor relations at the minute but hopefully one day things will improve for us.

That's good news PMB . I'm so pleased she was good about it, and bless your dsd for thinking of her brothers.

that's great news postmanbob

FAQ, hmmm, I'm confused now as I thought it would apply retrospectively? I had a voluntary arrangement with ex-h after I got the CSA involved because he wasn't paying anything. He said he couldn't afford the rate they'd worked out and because I was working at the time I agreed to a lesser amount. When I stopped work and claimed IS in 2006 I had to go through the CSA again, as per the rules, but it continued as a voluntary arrangement and my IS was reduced accordingly. He stopped paying anything though and I was forced to instruct the CSA to collect it off him directly in order that I would be able to get the full rate of IS again. It doesn't look like they are taking it off him though

According to the CSA website, it says from 2010 any maintenance payments won't be taken into account when working out claims for any benefit. I'm wondering how that will work though if a PWC gets, say, £700 in maintenance they will still be able to claim IS and get the full amount? Doesn't sound right to me.

A subject for another thread though I think. Sorry for the hijack PMB! Hope you get things sorted out ok.

Oh bums X post, sorry.

That's great news, PMB. Really glad it all went well!

glad it ended well and you all reached a happy compromise

Thats such good news, what a weight off your mind hey. I hope your dh wont feel guilty it sounds like he is just doing what needs to be done. If exp has ben saving 400 pound a month for the last 5 years for sd then your dh can know he has made a fantastic contribution financially to his dd's future. As previous posters have said there is so much more to being a dad than just money. It sounds like its worked out well for you.

I'm really pleased your DH's ex has taken the news well and objectively. It sounds like she's a sensible person who's bringing SD up very well to think of others.

I think any parent has an obligation to treat each of their children equally. and you could argue that meeting such an obligation is both particulary important and particularly complex in cases of divorce/second families etc.
The principle of treating people equally does not mean treating them identicially. when some of the kids are in different situations and have different needs you can treat them differently - but still equally (take, for example, spending lots of money on essentials for a child with a disability - no-one would, for a second argue that this was unfair on the other children). In this particular case it would seem that to give each child involved as near the same as possible it would not be unreasonable to do as op proposed (and I don't often say that on these threads - but this one has made me think hard)

just read the update - sounds very well-handled all round.

Excellent - and your SD has £24000 in the bank, so no-one can argue that your dh hasn't done his bit.

Enjoy the new job, and I hope it all goes well.

Wow, PMB that's really lovely of her.

BoffinMum, read my last post, the SD is living a lot nicer life than PMB. I think a lot of people have missed that point. Why should they pay double the legal entitlement?

I love the idea of the new CSA rules, I'll have to look them up when I'm not in the middle of a WOW instance (shh, don't tell them where I am)

Well said hatwoman.

Really pleased it seems to have gone off well. It's a great reflection on all concerned when exes and their subsequent partners can get on amicably.

I hope things turn around for you financially, too. (My dh is also involved in the construction industry and it looks potentially wobbly for us in the near future, too).