Child maintenance

[Notmyyearthisyear]

Two young kids who live with each of us 3.5 nights a week average, so time equally split. Husband earns more than I do.
I thought that I wouldn’t be due any child maintenance because of the evenly split time, but the government calculator suggests that I am (yet strangely, it only asks for his income, not mine!)
Can anyone share any advice on this?
Thank you

Bump 😊🤞

If it's 50 50 then I wouldn't claim that little bit extra just because he earns more than you. Have you tried doing it the other way and putting in his details to see if it says he could claim off you?

Gave you entered exactly 50:50 in terms of nights?
If it’s genuinely 50:50 you don’t have to agree to use cms and can agree zero maintenance between you
How much more are his earnings? Are you both genuinely going to be splitting all costs? Uniforms? Sports? Haircuts? Pocket money ? Etc

I also noticed that when I did the CMS calculations but my understanding is 50/50 means no maintenance paid.

But do phone the CMS - they are very helpful & will keep you right.

I have friends who do a genuine 50/50 & have an account where they pay an equal amount in to which covers clothes, shoes, uniform, mobile phones, hobbies etc. so costs are shared equally.

You don't want to be in the position of 50-50 care where no maintenance is paid but you are paying for everything.

What about child benefit? Who gets that?

If its genuinely 50/50 then there's no 1 person in charge of haircuts, dentist, doctors, buying clothes, after school care etc.

No I haven’t but it’s a good idea I suppose to work out the difference. I’ll give it a go.

Hi OP,

I don't know much about the CMS (or current equivalent) but I can confirm that my OH made payments to his ex-wife every month and their division on childcare was exactly 50/50. This was for almost 20 years and only ended last summer when their youngest went to university. So up until very recently! He now just supports his children directly as and when they mention they need help (as they're all adults now).

Throughout the years of 50/50 split he paid half of uniforms, half of school trips, did running around for appointments (when during his time), basically half of everything. I only mention this to demonstrate that CMS still calculated that he should make payments to their mum.

Salary wise I think they were very similar or at worst he was earning slightly more.

My understanding is that, as only 1 parent can claim the child benefit, whoever claims it is the one who receives maintenance payments from the other parent.

Thank you everyone for your contributions that’s very helpful. I’ll call them to find out.

The online calculator doesn't work for a 50/50 split.

When it is a genuine 50/50 shared care, no maintenance is due. Rather you will be both responsible for things on your time and you should come to an agreement about splitting costs for uniforms etc as others have mentioned.

Basically it's zero if care is genuinely 50/50.
But, someone could still have half the nights and not be genuinely 50/50 in which case the online calculator works it out.
And only the income of the (potential) payer is looked at, in the UK system. Other countries look at both.
Suggest you might want to talk about ensuring that all relevant costs are shared.