Experiences of child maintenance with high earning exDH?

[User63847484848]

Just wondered about others experiences of child maintenance where their ex is a high earner? The CMS calculator has a cap of something like £157,000 and after that the monthly maintenance amount doesn’t go up. STBX Is going to be earning much more than that (£250K) but is baulking even at the figure the CMS is giving. There are 3 kids and I have them all the time apart from 2 nights every other weekend so 52 nights a year (perhaps a few more as he will take them away in the summer I think). It’s coming out as £1777pm roughly but is effectively disregarding almost £100K of his salary. I work full time and earn less than £35K.

just wondered if in general other’s high earning ex’s give more than the CMS minimum in this scenario or not.

With the only person i know in this position she remained very, very amicable with her cheating ex dh through gritted teeth and together they agreed £2k a month.

court might be your best bet.

Yes, you need to take it to court if you want a more accurate figure for a salary that high. It might be worth the goodwill to accept the lower figure but get him to agree to finance certain discretionary things directly (clubs? school trips?)

Nice problem to have, though.

I think for a salary this high the norm would be periodical payments for both children and spouse agreed privately and - if that is not possible - by the courts.

Given he's taking home about £12k a month I'm a bit surprised he's getting jittery about £1.8k or thereabouts to pay for his own children. Does he have other large expenses he is currently expected to pay on top of that like your mortgage, private education etc?

It's a balancing act. On one hand, yes you could take him to court. He could also receive the summons and start looking at hiding or reducing his income. Morally not right but over a certain amount, the proportion he takes home after taxes etc is minimal. If you're also taking a large chunk of it, he might well decide its not worth putting in the work and reduce hours/change jobs/go self employed.

£1777 is a lot of maintenance - £21.5K a year is probably not far off the take home pay of someone earning £30K so it probably almost doubles your salary between maintenance and child benefit etc. If you can I'd get some form of agreement out of court - e.g. he pays you the CMS amount plus he pays private school tuition for example. By all means try and get what your children deserve, but ideally while maintaining a good coparenting relationship.

It's an interesting balancing act for a while as to whether you carry on working at the same level if you are the paying parent (and a major factor in that is going to be the extent to which the ex is also pulling their weight).

There is an awkward "higher taxpayer but below £100k" bracket where the payer also commutes at considerable expense. For example, a payer earning £100k and living about an hour outside of London can easily be paying £6k on commuting a year. On the last £15k in such a job (a typical London weighting for a white collar professional), taxes and NI on that are £6.3k and child maintenance could range from about £2-3k on that last £15k. So any benefit of working in London is effectively wiped out and payers might decide to work locally on a lower income with minimal impact to their own incomes. Quite a strong argument for doing so can be made to do a greater share of childcare too, so the recipient cannot do much about it.

On £250k though, the rail fare is going to be a lot more worthwhile paying and the child maintenance won't wipe out the benefit of working. So I would have thought it's a very different situation?

His contribution should be 50% so on 1777 per month you should also be contributing that. Hard to see how 3 children will cost 1k per month each? You have to also consider how much the divorce settlement will be in your favour and if he will continue to pay things like mortgage, holidays etc. You might end up thinking CMS amount is the right way forward in order to maintain a tolerable relationship with him?

@JustforAlice - all of that could easily be eaten up in childcare costs, depending on the ages of children.

Never mind food, clothing, hobbies, uniform, shoes, haircuts, dentist, pocket money, etc etc.

@JustforAlice how do you get to the the 50%? Figure? If children have a high earning parent then they should be entitled to benefit from that just as they would if the family lived together still.
you don’t expect a high earner to ‘match’ the lower contribution of the lower earner!

You are technically correct. Morally though, I think there is a grey area when one spouse is working less than they could because the maintenance is so significant. It feels a bit wrong to me that one parent could be up at 6am every day, working a high stress job and popping pills for high blood pressure when the other works part time demanding the same lifestyle. But it is nevertheless the law as it stands.

That’s an absolute myth.

each parent is meant to contribute a fair proportion of their earnings. The other parent’s amount is irrelevant.

It is not meant to be a 50/50 contribution.

With high earners there is a case for spousal maintenance, in particular to allow the children to maintain lifestyle whilst you build your career

How is the person doing 99% of the work associated with 3 children supposed to also contribute 50% of the money? When you are solely responsible for the parenting of 3 children you cannot earn what the person whos has them 2 weekends a month does. The only time both parents are required to contribute equally is when they both have the children 50/50. Clearly not the case in this situation.

If he wont contribute anymore than the calculator, and if he is not also paying for private school, then you can take him to court for what is called a 'top up' contribution, designed specifically for these circumstances. Google "Top-up child maintenance orders".

12k a month?!

8k a month ish before pensions if he's in the UK paying regular tax and NI contributions.

Yes, but. I mean on £250k there is. On lower incomes probably less so because UC drops £ for £ on SM received and its rare a payer will have enough to make it worthwhile receiving. Also, getting enough SM to "bridge the gap" is not always a good idea because it means the receiver loses access to passport benefits like 85% of childcare costs whilst building a career. Often it therefore makes more sense to negotiate a higher share of capital instead and agree to forego SM.

The guy is on £12k net. He earns £250k gross.

@BetterFuture1985

Makes way more sense 😂 was thinking that's not what I see hit the bank account! Damn that glass of wine already ruining all comprehension skills!

Is he self employed ? If he is then there are "tricks" that he can use to make his income less for CM purposes.
My ex is a high earner and he pays for extras like the kids phone contracts and tech like laptops.
My biggest worry was housing and I got most of the equity as he has the ability to get bigger mortgages than me. The kids staying at their current state school was luckily a priority for him which I think helped my case.
Are your kids in private schools?

A friend of mine took her ex to Court. She tried to be amicable but he's tight. (I just remembered a couple of examples where he showed me he was tight.)

She supports herself but is in a much lower paid job then before living with him. So the money she gets from him is definitely spent on their children. This means when they are 18 she will be OK.

It was worth her taking him to Court as years later it slipped out he has screwed over close family members with money.

@BetterFuture1985 -
You are technically correct. Morally though, I think there is a grey area when one spouse is working less than they could because the maintenance is so significant. It feels a bit wrong to me that one parent could be up at 6am every day, working a high stress job and popping pills for high blood pressure when the other works part time demanding the same lifestyle. But it is nevertheless the law as it stands.

But op and her ex work full-time. The op is not expecting her ex to fund her 🙄 and you have no idea about how stressful OP's job and her ex's job are.

Op likely has a more stressful life given she's doing 99% of childcare.

I think you will find the OP actually has 85% of the childcare. Contrary to trendy opinion childcare is not as stressful as the average job earning £250k a year although it can be boring and lonely. It's also the first thing I would recommend changing, the ex husband is taking the piss only doing 52 nights a year and needs to step up because the OP needs to be able to work more herself.

Otherwise, my point was more a general one than specific to this scenario. Maintenance conversations tend to be easier if one side is not taking the piss, whether that's a payer fiddling the books or a recipient working less than they could.

He hasnt paid for 3 years
Gone thru cms in this time
They did fuck all. He owes thousands in back pay but has cited the cost of living crisis so now pay £25 a month. So kids will be 50 plus when he pays it off.

You are technically correct. Morally though, I think there is a grey area when one spouse is working less than they could because the maintenance is so significant. It feels a bit wrong to me that one parent could be up at 6am every day, working a high stress job and popping pills for high blood pressure when the other works part time demanding the same lifestyle. But it is nevertheless the law as it stands.

Maybe the ex has reached a £250k salary because he only does 15% of the childcare? Maybe if OP was single then she would be on more because she'd be able to do the sort of things that get promotions like business trips, extra training and longer hours? Some job salaries never reach the 6 figure mark but they are necessary for society to function eg social workers, teachers.

A fairer system would be for NRP to be liable for half of the childcare fees. Maybe then they would find a way to have their children more.

OP works full-time & has kids all week, with her ex-h having children EOW.

You can bet your bottom dollar he'd not be earning 250K if he was doing 50-50 care.

And perhaps OP might be able to get a promotion, go to conferences & drinks/social work occasions if she didn't have full Mon-Fri responsibilities for DC.

I see where you are coming from but this argument is fallible. Someone earning £250k could much more cheaply have paid childcare than it will have cost them in lost assets in a divorce.

Also I'm loath to blame the ex-spouse who divorced an unemployed loser too. If you take equal contribution to its logical conclusion the other spouse ultimately made an equal contribution not just if their STBX earns £250k but also if they're a drunk bankrupt. So I've never really subscribed to this opinion but accept it is the law of the land.

I do think your suggestion of splitting childcare costs 50/50 is a good one though. It would certainly work for me as it would more than halve what I pay!

Good luck with making the ex husband step up and do more than 52 nights per year - how is OP supposed to make him do that if he doesn't want to, @BetterFuture1985?