UC eligibility - can all income from the Ex be classed as CM?

[sallysm]

I may need to claim UC at somepoint.

At the moment I have nothing official about how and what my Ex should pay me each month. He just sends a bank transfer. There's no court orders, no CM agency.

However, for easy numbers, lets say he sends me £1000 a month, to prove a point for this question.

If I say the £1000 is child maintenance, (and if I'm eligible for UC) then the £1000 won't be deducted from it. But if I said £500 was CM (if based on the CM calculator) and the other £500 was voluntary topups/incidentals/SM/whatever, then that £500 perhaps would get deducted from any UC applicable.

So when people do get assessed for UC, do they just say all money from their Ex is CM, to avoid anything being deducted from UC entitlement? Or does the UC assessment check what amount of the money coming from the Ex, should be considered as CM, and not (deductable) SM. Ie, do they contact him, ask him his salary, and work out themselves what portion of the £1000 should be considered as CM and what should be considered as SM.

No experience but I'm sure someone will be along shortly.

My word of caution Would be if you lie, you may need him to back you up later down the line when/if they start asking questions. Is the relationship amicable enough for that and can you be sure it always will be?

I guess my other point here, isn't it totally subjective what proportion of the money your Ex sends you, is classed as 'CM' vs non 'CM'? As in, so what if the gov calculator says a number. That's surely only a bottom line legal amount. What if the Ex wants to pay you higher amounts of CM than the calculator says?

I’d put it all down as child maintenance. At the risk of the wrath of mumsnetters, I’ll admit that I told UC that I was receiving zero child maintenance even though he ended up paying me a decent amount monthly for the year I was off work. I got asked once in the job centre if dad was paying any money and my reply was ‘nowhere near what he should really’ and that was it’. That was a few years ago now and it’s never been questioned that he’s sent me any payments at all. If I were to put the circumstances down here why I did it I wouldn’t get many people disagreeing with me

But why lie? Child maintenance makes no difference to your claim anyway.

So you're lying to receive more in Universal Credit, at a cost to the taxpayer, not your ex??

CM doesn’t count toward UC. No matter how much you’re getting.

It can, however, count in some areas toward council tax support if you get that. It’s really not worth lying or hiding it from them as council tax issues can spiral very quickly.

No it doesn’t make a difference because all CM is ignored in a UC calculation. I got well over a thousand a month from one father and 600 from another and they didn’t reduce my payments. All money for the kids from their dads is CM even if it comes through in dribs and drabs and is earmarked for a particular purpose . Still doesn’t matter so just declare what’s ever he gives you all as CM .

It is all CM, whether he's paying you more than the suggested minimum or not. I've been on UC for a few years now and they've never contacted my ex or even checked what I received from him because it's no longer taken into account. When I was on income support 15+ years ago it was looked at and included as income but not now.

The issue is that whilst CM doesn’t effect UC spousal support does. Trying to claim spousal as child support is such an obvious con that of course it will be checked. There are very few things that aren’t.

To carry this off you would need to convince your ex to be complicit in fraud. His conscience won’t let, his wallet won’t let him and his lawyers won’t let him.

And of course if your divorce settlement said £1000 for CM and £0 for spousal your ex could revert to CMS payments after a year. So no lawyer would tell you this was a good idea instead of taking capital. No lawyer would let you put forward a proposal to defraud.

Very few people get spousal support though. If there is likely to be a court ordered spouse support payment agreed as part of your divorce that will impact UC. if you have a joint property that can only be ignored for 6 m before the assumed value will affect your claim.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/universal-credit/on-universal-credit/check-how-much-universal-credit-youll-get/#h-3-check-if-your-income-or-savings-affects-your-payments

Have it formally agreed as child maintenance using a Christmas Order. Christmas Orders are child maintenance orders that renew once a year and therefore CMS won't override them as each order is less than a year old.

Obviously if I was advising your ex though, two things:

1. I'd tell him to be certain he needed to pay you more than the minimum CM. He almost certainly doesn't; and

2. I'd tell him if you wanted it all as CM, to get a clean break on SM immediately as part of the deal. Otherwise by overpaying CM he would be proving an ability to pay SM in the future.

I would certainly recommend payers to always pay as SM rather than CM over the minimum amount unless they got something worthwhile in return in the negotiation. At the very least making SM worthless to the recipient makes extensions much less worthwhile pursuing.

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