thoughts on child support and access

[glitternanny]

we split on wednesday after nearly 4 years and have a son who is one.

he works shifts (currently 7 working then 3/4 off - soon to be 4 on/4 off) and I take our DS to work with me when he's at work - at the moment over 3 weeks DS is at home with Daddy 3 days.

Just looking around at access, what do I have to offer? what works?

And child support thingi - it seems I can be entitled to £180pm from him, if he earns £300pw and has DS overnight about 60 nights a year (current rota not new one)

Just like some advice before I raise both subjects with him

Also how do I get this 'legal' or agreed or do we try and work this out between ourselves before taking that step?

TIA.

noone??

CSA website will tell you how much support should be. I'm not quite clear on your present child care arrangements, but whatever the situation is, you need to sit down and arrange how you can work it as equally as possible. There are plenty of websites to find this stuff out from, but most legal websites suggest that you split things as equally as possible, regardless of who has done the lion's share of the childcare up to now. If this doesn't suit the way in which you both work, then you have to sit down and agree what kind of situation you're going to have. Anything less than half, and the child support goes up. Hope that helps a little.

Don't know what websites Merry has been on, but the law most certainly doesn't say that parents should divide the children equally. In fact research says that children benefit from having one home, but regular overnight contact with the other parent. True shared care is still very much in the minority if cases.

Collaborate - I'd be grateful if you could point me in the direction of any research that says that re one home - am in desperate need of it to back up my position. Whenever I google lots of pro- fathers rights sites come up! Many thanks.

Have a look at this.

www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed97451

And this:

www.judiciary.gov.uk/JCO%2FDocuments%2FFJC%2FPublications%2FAnnex_2.pdf (this is one from the judges)

I'm sure there are many more articles. Have a look at the links in the first article.

Thank you so much Collaborate; that is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to find. Very much appreciated.