Child Maintenance on 50/50 care....is this REALLY correct?

[Amicablecouple]

Hi Everyone.

Now this is probably not as easy or straight forward as it sounds!

My question is do you pay Child Maintenance if you have the children 50% of the time? Common sense would suggest 'No, Why would you that would be silly and completely unfair?'. However after joining many online communities and Facebook groups it appears that you still do have to pay and many are paying unless they have a 'Shared Lives With' Court Order and have taken CMS to the Tribunal stage....but as a matter of course you still have to pay without this and even with this court order it is still a battle!

It would appear that CMS uses a few factors to determine who pays and who receives but when 50/50 care is given it uses the factor of "Who is in receipt of Child Benefit" to be the receiving parent. If you go on the CMS/Government website and put the information into their calculator it comes up with the sum that needs to be paid even if you input that you have the children stay with you 50% of the time.

Does anyone have experience of this is practice. Have they got 50% care and either pay/don't pay maintenance.....why/how.

I am not tying to shirk paying for my children at all but to pay twice (once when they are not with me and again when they are) is NOT fair or just in any way!

Any/all real life experience and views would be greatly received.

THANK YOU!

This is a little extract from one of the groups to illustrate my point and question...not me.

Hi .
I have by law now got 50/50 shared care of my children , HOWEVER the CMS still want me to pay £57.50 a week ...Now you would think that even though we have 50/50 shared care then I wouldnt have to pay anything.…RIGHT ...Wrong...
I phoned them up and spoke to possible the most unhelpful person ever to grace this planet afer getting no help what so ever, I decided to hang up on the twat...(EXCUSE MY FRENCH).
I then spoke to another slightly more helpful individual who informed me that they had made the decision and if i wanted to appeal against it then I would have to write in and request a Mandatory Reconsideration. ( ignore the court documents)
I also asked the said individual if it was possible to provide to me a copy of the the evidence that they used in order to make this decision ... you guessed it.…, they are not allowed to do that .
I’m now in the process of gathering evidence but in the letter received from them, there isnt a section offering help or advice as to what evidence is needed. ( I know you'd have thought they would offer some kind of advice )
So my question to you lovely people is . Has anyone had to do this and if so what evidence did you supply and were you successful .
Thank you .

I would say that common sense would be that, depending on the circumstances- ie a large disparity in wages as a result of one party being able to advance their career at the others expense - child maintenance would be owed so that the children aren’t living a champagne life in one house, and a gruel and bread life in the other. That would br obvious I would have thought.

Yes I would agree but that is when the income are pretty much comparable?!

As I understand it, if one parent is earning a lot more than the other then yes CMS is still needed. It wouldn’t be fair for children to live in luxury for half their time and then relative poverty for the other half of their time.

It seems reasonable to me

I don’t believe it’s the case that if people were on equal salaries one would pay cms - I suspect you’ve found a load of bitter ex’s on social media who begrudge paying for their children and haven’t given the full picture of their finances.

That is strange then, I can’t think of the reason, sorry. Unless one party is doing all the booking and paying for extra curricular etc and it’s towards that?

I can see the moral arguments above, but my understanding is that if the split is 50:50 there is no child maintenance payable as both parents are incurring equal costs.

https://www.google.com/url?q=commonslibrary.parliament.uk/how-does-shared-care-affect-a-child-maintenance-calculation/%23:~:text%3DIf%2520the%2520paying%2520parent%2520can,either%2520parent%2520to%2520pay%2520maintenance.&sa=U&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwinvOKGraCOAxUcQEEAHc-DNWEQFnoECB8QBQ&usg=AOvVaw3TSvoKZWieKjJMWVmLHaR6

It will be disparity of income. The idea is that the children have the same standard of living in each home. Obviously that is never the case even when child maintenance is payable. But it’s at least an attempt to even things up

Such a long post but neglected to mention difference in earnings or anything else relevant, clearly CMS deem that to be an appropriate amount, and affordable.

Jesus how many threads are you going to post about this, changing the details every time (including sometimes pretending to be your ex instead of you) to try and get different responses?

I can't imagine how relieved your ex is to be getting divorced.

If you have to pay then you could just say
Ok because I pay cm all the big ticket items like braces, glasses, winter coat, school trips are on you.
Would you agree to that or would you rather we split them?

If income is comparable and you have a shared lives with then you can counter claim but you'd have to pay than you'd get back more overall

Also, just because you are sharing the nights with the child equally it's quite likely one parent is still the default parent doing the hair cuts, shoe shopping, orthodontist, new trainers, school trips, birthday presents for friends and for end of year gift for teacher etc.
unless you can come to a private arrangement for these expenses then the organized default parent who does the mental load and life admin should get financial support to pay for this stuff

50/50 should mean no maintenance payable or at the very least both parents should have to pay each other, you never hear the "champagne lifestyle" reason when it's the father who can't provide the children with an equal life because he's paying maintenance to the mother who has often kept CB, UC and the house or eligibility for social housing.

This is my first thread on this topic. Keyboard warrior....you must be so proud of yourself!

If you cant be constructive then why try to hurt people with your words....clearly you have issues that you need to work though or you would not feel the need to troll people and make comments that do no good and are only aimed to be unkind. I feel sorry for you.

Good luck working through yourself....I hope you find peace!

😂😂😂😂 OK. Show me my thread that is solely about child maintenance and this question? You wont. I wont get into a slanging match with you as I am better than that. Clearly you are not which is why you started the aggression. Please work on yourself for your sake and your future! Good luck!

From what I've read, the CMS takes the view that even with 50 / 50 split of nights, there's still usually a "primary parent" that absorbs the brunt of the unusual spend (school trips, uniforms, dentist costs etc?), and this is the assumption even when incomes are relatively equal.

My understanding is that it requires some acknowledgement / agreement of "full shared care", not just 50/50 night split, to set CM to zero.

Hello there any solicitor mums on here who can help???
I attended family court yesterday for the first time for a court order. The applicant (the father) wanted many orders to be considered. He was granted parental responsibility yesterday (our son in nearly 9). He asked for our son’s surname to change from mine to his. The magistrate said he would not order this. That we should negotiate outside of court. Suggesting we might double barrel the name. We then went out to mediate with caffcass regarding the shared care rota. THe father would not agree. We came back into court. The law advisor asked us both if we were happen to have the final court order today put in place. We both said yes. The magistrate ordered the rota and then also said he was changing our son’s name to double barrel the surname. We never had a discussion about this. I contested this as he said he wasn’t go to make an order. The legal advisor confirmed that is what he had previously said. The magistrate asked the father if he was happy with just my surname. He said no so the magistrate said then I decide it’s double barrelled. I feel I have good grounds for appeal as the process was not adhered to. I also feel there could be a sexual discrimination case here? Any thoughts ??

Thoughts are first of all there’s no sexual discrimination that can be applied in the family law so forget about that.
Secondly, start yourself your own thread and layout. What it is exactly that you concerned about in detail. This one is incredibly confusing.

It will be because unless you are strictly splitting every cost 50/50 like hair cuts, shoes, activities, bday party gifts then there will be a primary parent who is paying those things and the question is is that fair? And the award of CMS in that situation serves to even things up - after all - if the other parent suddenly said I’m not paying for X you’ll have to there is little the other can do about it

I imagine you provide CMS with evidence you pay exactly 50% of all school and other costs? So everytime they get a new jumper or pair of shoes or hair cut you have evidence of the bank transfer to the other parent.