Maintenance

[Coconutyellow05]

So my ex partner earns £50k a year therefore he will need to pay me nearly £700 a month maintenance- he is saying he won’t do this and will fiddle his wages and just take dividends - I am relying on this to pay my bills etc - is there anything I can do?

You can ask the CMS to take the dividends into account. The CMS will start off by providing an assessment based on his wages. You must go back to them asap and ask for a Variation to include dividends or any other ways he has diverted his earnings or any investment income ( e.g. rents or interest) if these are more than £2,500 a year. If he tries to hide funds by making big pension payments,having an expensive company car or simply hoarding funds in the business, the CMS can take those into account too. Get advice from your solicitor about this.

Not sure a solicitor will help here
It’s under jurisdiction of cms
Put in claim

Thank you that’s very helpful x

I'm sure you are aware if they don't want to pay. They will find the loop holes. It's not fair and the system is rubbish. I've a court order for arrears from 2019. And still not a penny.

Use the system to help you. My youngest was 5 when ex left. She is now 9. And I live in hope that I'm the next nine years I might see some of that money.

It's fairly clear that some kinds of worker self-employed, running a business, working for family find it easier to evade CMS than other types.

ITsDinah is correct, you need to ask them to take dividends into account.

Dividends still count as income - I get dividends and have to declare on my tax return. And CMS and HMRC have access to his previous tax returns. But looks like you do have to tell CMS to investigate dividend income rather than it happening automatically.