Child maintenance

[Bluebaron1]

Bit confused on the .gov calculator. I’ve entered my income and details etc and come up with a. Figure I should be paying.
however there is nowhere to enter my partners income I assume it only works if she is unemployed?
I’ve entered her details and she had to pay me!
Or do we do both and then take one from the other?
ideas?

Jesus wept. Even if she's earning 10x what you are why do you think you shouldn't contribute to your kids. You sound just like my ex

I'm not sure how you have this so confused.

If the contact is 50/50 neither pays anything.

If one parent has the child more, the other parent pays them. The parent who has the child more pays nothing to the one who has the child less.

Very simple really. Anyone who has the child less than 50% of the time has to pay. Anyone who has their child 50% or more of the time doesn't need to pay.
You really seem to think it's unfair to contribute to your child's upbringing

I'm not in the UK, but I was just interested in how the UK work this out.
I went into your gov.uk website calculator, I put in I'm the "payer", who has children 50% of the time, and a random salary, and it told me I should be paying £100 a week for 2 children. How is that if it's 50/50 split?

It’s not that I don’t want to contribute as all. just to prove the point how rubbish it is I’ve done the following calculations.

first I put in receiving money I’ve entered her details and put 50/50 custody. (She earns £40k a year).
it said she should pay me £169 a month.

Second I did it again saying I’m paying money .same 50/50 custody ( I earn £150k)
it said I should pay her £582 a month

Not sure what the difference is in paying/receiving if custody is 50/50? Maybe that’s where I’m going wrong?

Exactly it doesn’t make sense

And this is going to blow your mind OP but some people pay more than the calculator tells them to!

The calculator is a guide. Where custody is 50/50 or close and income is similar, no maintenance is required, you don't need to use the calculator. Where there's a large income differential then spousal maintenance may be court ordered.

When one parent has the children more, usually the other parent pays maintenance based on income

You might have to pay more as the calculator caps at £150k and has to be separately worked out for higher earners.

However, as you have 50:50 care, read the first page before you click 'start'. It tells you the calculator doesn't apply to shared care.

I do think there are some anomalies. I have my kids more like 60/40..when I type in my details to receive CMS is get a figure my ex should pay me, but if I do it the other way round (to pay
Rather than receive) even when the kids are with me more I am given a figure to pay...I am a higher earner than ex-DH though but not by loads

Ignore me! I've checked and I was wrong! Calculator works fine!!

As I understand it the calculator is a guide, presumably to aid parents who are setting up a private payment arrangement. You can use it as the payer or receiver and if you have a 50/50 arrangement it still works.

I think this is so that parents can try to ensure the children have a similar level of lifestyle across both households and one can top up the other if there is a large disparity in incomes.

So yes OP, I would say you take one payment away from the other and the difference between the two is what the high income parent would pay to the lower earning one - in an ideal scenario!!!

I think when it's 50/50 you both effectively claim against the other and so yes you deduct her amount from yours and pay that.

Pus seeing as you are on so much more why would you do that? The money if for your kids not for your ex - it's not spousal maintenance.

I think if you plan to pay half of childcare then fair enough deduct her but off but if you won't be paying half of childcare and plan to pay the minimum amount you can you are not a nice person

It's not designed so you deduct one parent's contribution from the other.

Of course, in a private arrangement you can actually do what you want.

The calculator is used to decide a bare minimum amount for the parent who has the child less than 50% of the time to pay. It's not a complicated concept or calculation.

Well it is complicated if you both have a 50/50 split on different incomes.

like a few have said best to sit down and work out what’s best for the child. That’s what I’m going to do.

this discussion was about the calculation matrix which it’s obviously totally flawed.

How is it flawed?

That's the part I am saying is not a complicated concept or calculation. There's a very simple mathematical formula which it applies based on the inputs you give it.

It tells you the bare minimum amount you should be agreeing as a sum towards child maintenance when not shared care (50:50) and if the non resident parent earns less than £150k (it has a maximum floor so it can't calculate correctly above incomes of £150k).

Private agreements might or might not want to take it as q starting point, or simply consider it the amount to be paid. If it's 50:50 then neither pays the other and it tells you that the calculator isn't designed to work in that situation. That's not a flaw. It's just one of the parameters.

Don't use it if 50:50

When it says 'half the time' you will note that 172x2 does not equal 365 days of the year. Neither does 182, although it's pretty close.

That's because if you are doing 50:50 shared care you are not supposed to be using this calculator.

I suppose the flaw is saying 'half the time' for those who didn't read the first page and can't do maths.

If you wish to still use the calculator, then go ahead. But you don't need to do weird subtractions and additions with it. Just work out if your child needs more money and pay it somehow

We used to run a separate account for kids stuff and both pay into it. Uniform, pocket money, clubs etc came out of that. Meals and energy bills etc came from our separate accounts.

If care is genuinely split 50/50 then maintenance isn't due. If you earn significantly more, you should pick up more of the slack though. So I'd expect you to be paying more towards hobbies/clothes/uniforms/school trips etc.

You seem to be missing the point of child maintenance. It is rightly assumed that both parents should and would want to contribute towards their children. If you earn £150k why are you bleating about wanting £150 from someone earning £40k.

The amount you pay correlates to your earnings. Your children would've benefitted from your income if you were still together. Why would they stop benfitting from it because you've broken up?

If there's a house in the mix, your ex can probably stay in that until the youngest is 18 too.

Don't be an arse.

Its not a fixed rate. Its a proportional amount. A % of your income. As such if you are earning substantially more then yes your contribution will be significantly higher than if it was the other way round.

The flaw, IMO it it shouldn’t have an option for 50% care at all. And as it does it should generate a £0 amount for both paying/receiving ( and that’s a flaw as well, it doesn’t say which/why pick either one?)

I totally get it’s a guide but it’s a pretty useless one. It would be better for someone to sit down a publish an up to date guide based on a range of circumstances like care ratio/both incomes/childcare/housing etc etc.

also I don’t appreciate the negative views that I’m trying to avoid paying childcare. I am merely outlining how ineffective the “guide” is.

Depending on your respective earnings, eliminating child maintenance because of 50/50 care can create a situation where suddenly you have the means to pay spousal maintenance. My solicitor recommended a 60/40 split of child care so that she got money from me in the form of CM and SM:

1. Because it stops when the children reach a certain age;
2. Because I could pay a lower amount (because CM does not reduce a UC claim, whereas SM does);
3. It can be changed after the divorce settles if care becomes 50/50 later on (but door on SM has firmly been shut).

Had I gone for 50/50, I was warned I could be slogging my guts out working full time and doing half the childcare whilst the my lazy ex-wife cruised through life working only part time, receiving SM and enjoying lots of time off when the children were with me.

Inevitably, a year on, we're now getting to the stage where the eldest doesn't want to live with mum anymore so CM should start dropping fast now!

It doesn't have an option for 50:50 care.

It has options that even if one parent provided the bulk of the care the other parent could still provide 365 of the overnight stays hence the calculation allows that scenario

OP, I think you’re getting a hard time here by people projecting other situations.
I was also confused by this when I looked into it, but it says in the front that it isn’t intended for use in 50/50 shared custody situations, see here.

I still find that a bit unsatisfactory in situations where custody is 50/50 but there’s a big earning disparity. Maybe that’s when it has to be court ordered.

For what it's worth, I receive cm from my ex and we pay cm to my dh's ex. We've used the calculator on numerous occasions and it has never yet given us the same figure that cm give us on the official calculation. The calc is neither use nor ornament.