If you agreed a settlement/child maintenance how did you arrive at the agreed sum?

[PerfectlyDone]

I've posted a fair bit about my situation: 20 yrs married, 4 kids, H has OW and has, kind of, left: rents a flat nearby, all his stuff still in marital home, finances an ongoing challenge to separate. He is no hurry to actively help us sort all this out. I want to keep the house for the DCs but don't know yet whether I will be able to.

Have any of you arrived at an agreement by looking at bills and actual costs or is the child maintenance calculator the way to go?
And how on earth do I ensure that he actually pays??

The calcuator is the way to go. You need to go to www.cmoptions.org
The guidance you need plus a free phone number can be found there.
If you have concerns that a family - based arrangement will not work then you may need to go down the
Statutory child maintenance route.
The site also gives advice on seperation.
All the best

Thank you, Poshindevon, that's what I thought.

I suppose I was wondering whether there is anybody whose exPartner pays more than what is calculated for their children?

STBXH's income in in 6 figures, I have always worked part-time (since we had kids, that is).

Our court order has just been agreed.

First thing to sort out is childcare. How are you dividing that?

I suggested EOW and nearly half of school holidays.

This then gives you the amount of overnights he'll have them for.

CMS is way to go for child maintenance. If you gave up a career to facilitate his and will be primary career you need to get a decent lawyer to agree either a larger share of joint assets to enable you to continue to House them or ongoing spousal maintenance. It’s unlikely you’ll get that for long, but you should receive something to compensate you for lost earning ability

My priority is to secure the boys' futures - the youngest is only 8. If he wants to go to uni etc there is 10-15 years of supporting him still to come.
I am not at all bothered about spousal maintenance as thank goodness I can support myself.

If you're not asking for spousal, you can at least use this as a bargaining chip to get more generous child maintenance, ie I will forgo any claim to SM if you will agree to pay x in CM. If your ex is getting legal advice, they will be telling him to get out of paying SM at all costs, as it leaves him open to variation in future if your circumstances change. Respect to you for standing on your own two feet.

Any CM agreed by a court order is only binding for 12 months. Beyond that the CMS has jurisdiction so your ex could then revert to the minimum legal payment and you would have no recourse. SM remains within the court's jurisdiction. I don't think it's about standing on your own two feet so much as ensuring that the real costs of the children are split equally between the parents and CMS usually falls far short of 50% of the costs.

Agree with all above. Our court order has taken so long to get in agreement because we have a disabled child who will be dependent upon me for life.... so for his maintanance to cease at 18yrs was unfair.