CMS Payments

[Needingadvice97]

My husband has an agreed child maintenance payment through a court order of his two children of £1,700/month (plus she gets spousal support) when he divorced but that was having them a Friday and Saturday night every other weekend about five years ago. Fast forward to now when he has them almost half the time but she is refusing to talk about any sort of reduction. His court order says he can go to the CMS at any time and the online CMS calculator says it should be more like £850/month. Has anyone experienced going to the CMS whilst having a court order in place? We went to a solicitor to talk it through recently who charged a fortune and didn't really get any clear advice so I'm thinking we just put in a CMS application?

Yes just do that. Circumstances have changed.

If the court order explicitly says he can go to CMS then he should do so. If she wants to take him back to court then that is on her to do as long as he sticks inside the parameters of the court order.

Courts don’t have jurisdiction after 12 months re child maintenance so it passes to cms so put in a claim /assessment

just check whether the order states separate figures for child and spousal or if it actually refers to global maintenance/ if the latter he’d need a court variation to reduce

Yeah just go to cms

Yes, the solicitor doing the divorce made sure the spousal and child maintenance were listed separately

Is that true? That makes sense on the court order then as it states CMS can be contacted after 12 months and the payee (my husband) can make a pound for pound reduction. But how much can she contest it? We’ve made a note of all the nights and currently the older one is staying 8 nights out of 14. We wouldn’t have done anything but we are now paying 90% of school fees for the younger one so are pretty skint (he refused to go to the large local state school so having to pay for him to go to a tiny private one). The ex wife has now got a job so she is bringing in £1000’s per month and claiming poverty whilst we are scraping money together each month to pay her and school fees.

She won’t be able to contest it especially if you can demonstrate/.have evidence of the overnights

what does the order say re spousal maintenance? Ie criteria for it ending? You may have a case to request a variation on that as well if her own circumstances have improved, why is she not contributing to school fees too? Your husband should look into applying for spousal variation too ( chance of success will depend on what the order says and if he can demonstrate his circumstances have changed)

Oh and if he’s doing 50:50 a nil assessment would be made on cms

It would mean us going back to court which we can’t afford so accepting we will have to pay that for the next few years. But thought we should review the child maintenance as the number of nights we have them have changed so drastically since the court order. It was the fact she was telling us that it can’t be changed that made me question it.

Well if he has 8 out of 14 every week then out in a claim for cms from her….::

That would go down like a lead balloon!!! But will consider it if it continues

He needs to start standing up to her !

My now DH went from court ordered / agreed CM to the CMS (after his EW continued demand more & more when the court ordered figure was based on her not asking for more).

After 12 months of the consent order being signed the payee (your OH) can ask the CMS to assess.

Do it. Sounds like both sets of circumstances have changed and more importantly the number of overnights.