Child maintenance when termtime & holidays differ

[Rj82]

Hi everyone. This is my first post here so I hope I've put it in the right place.

My ex and I have chosen to have a different co-parenting schedule in school holidays from the one we follow in term time.

In term time, it is 50-50 and completely equal shared care.

During school holiday weeks it's more like 60-40 because my ex can take more holiday and can be a lot more flexible with work than me.

This makes it tricky to work out how much child maintenance should be paid. During term time when we do 50/50 (about 80% of the year), nothing is owed according to the Gov / CM guidance. But during the hols (about 20% of the year) I would owe about £150 a week.

The problem is, the Child Maintenance calculator just works it out based on total overnights per year, which works out as 175 for me and 190 for my ex. Using those numbers, CM says I should pay £85 every week, 52 weeks a year - despite the fact that we share care equally for 80% of those weeks. I am struggling to understand why I would be expected to continue paying during term time when the childcare costs we face during those weeks are the same.

Does anyone else have experience of handling child maintenance when you follow different parenting patterns at different points of the year?

Could you not just pay £150 a month during the holidays only?

Lol at overall number of nights per year and work it out based on that. Don’t see why a problem. Use the number of nights based on the te time and holiday schedule

eg if it works out at say 200 nights overall use that figure and pay same amount each month

or just agree what you want to do between you

That's just it... I could pay £150 a week during holidays only (works out about £1500 a year), but the child maintenance calculator says I should pay £85 a week all year round based on the total number of overnights, which comes to about £4500. Not sure why I should pay three times as much?

Not sure you've understood what I have tried to explain... If we work it out based solely on total number of overnights, the child maintenance calculator expects me to pay over the odds for periods when I have 50/50 shared care for the kids.

Unfortunately my ex and I are not able to talk about money without it becoming a big argument.

Find a way to keep it 50/50 over the term breaks/holidays if he won't have a reasonable discussion. Cheaper to pay for holiday clubs or arrange swaps with parents of their friends than pay him, frankly.

The CMS calculator bases its calculations on overnights. Does he have overnights on these days in the holidays or is it just care during the day?

And what are the total overnights for each of you for the whole year? If he is doing 190 and you are doing 175 overnights then he could apply to the CMS for you to pay the figure they have calculated, regardless of the split of when you do the care as it's the overall overnights on a yearly basis they calculate from.

You’re confusing things
the amount paid over a 12 month period is the same
rather than pay eg 200 a month some months then nothing others better to just pay a set monthly average based on the total nights per year

So of it stayed at 50/50, you'd have to pay for childcare. How much would that be? Ultimately, that's the default, so I'd agree anything that is less than that.

Legally if he's having that 60% in school holidays as overnights then he can claim that through CMS. You can agree an alternative payment together, if he won't then you can either pay or stay 50/50 on school holidays.