Child maintenance dispute

[trex13]

Name changed for this.

For the past three years ex has been paying £20ish per week maintenance.
He currently has ds 1-2 overnights per week.
This has been calculated by CMS from his declared earnings.
He has his own business and is a successful tradesman. Frequent abroad holidays, owns his own house, 2 vehicles, single.
He claims he works 5am-7pm. Has business meetings frequently, has bagged lots of big named company jobs (he likes to boast about this to me regularly) However basically earns a pittance!
I am working full time and paying for childcare and im finding it hard to make ends meet.
I knew from my first calculation years ago he wasnt being truthful about his income, have just gotten my review and its a whopping £1 more.
I called cms and said his lifestyle does not align with what he says he is earning and they told me to look up companies house and gather info.
Im not clued into this kind of stuff at all can someone give me advice please

cm

What would they consider as evidence? Txt msgs ?

@CamerichagainWill they tell him someone has reported him? He can be abusive at times and i dont want to rile him

i have these from years ago

You can't do anything in this situation. That's the reality.

It's tax efficient for him to declare minimum wage. It's what self-employed people do.

HMRC won't be interested and CMS won't find anything. You have to suck it up unfortunately.

That is completely untrue.

OP, report him to HMRC as he has undeclared income. Then request an FIU from the CMS. I bloody hate men like this.

@TheFormidableMrsC sorry what is a FIU

Financial Investigation Unit at the CMS. It was helpful for me.

Id send in anything and everything you have. There's no guarantee they'll accept it. But you need to try.

I sent screenshots of texts proving my ex didn’t live with other children, and links to his business on Facebook (which he claimed made no money). I also sent screenshots of all the messages cancelling his contact that day as he was working. CMS wouldn't accept any of it. But at least I tried.

I'd consider some good old fashioned blackmail to be honest.

If his previous earnings are typical, then he's not making loads and it would be totally normal to declare minimum wage and take the rest as dividends.

This is totally normal for men to avoid their CMS. Half the women on MN have been through it.

Without any evidence, you can't do anything about it.

That was not the case for me.

This happens to every single woman who’s ex is self employed.

I don’t know how they can sleep at night, knowing they deliberately deprive their children of money.

I can't give you any nitty gritty advice but I also didn't realise how grown up my husband was in our early 20s at setting up payments direct to his child's mum at a set percentage of his income which stayed the same until she turned 18 (and obvs increased when his wage did), never changed it when she stayed with us a few nights a week, or when our children were born. And bought uniforms, coats, school trips, passports, driving lessons etc because that's what parents do. I didn't begrudge it, he wanted to do it all properly and have a good relationship with the mum and most importantly that his child was well cared for.

I know self employed people can act as your ex is but in this case I'd say "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" and report him to HMRC to investigate. It might feel like a lot of money to him because it is a lot of money but that money needs to be spent on his kids.

Those business accounts don’t show a high turnover. Maybe his most recent accounts will.

He may be pushing a lot of personal expenses through the company. But I can’t see either HMRC auditing those expenses if he works from his home and uses the vehicles for work.

What was your / his lifestyle like when you were together?

Sounds like he’s paying himself a minimum wage from his business but then taking a dividend too, sneaky bugger!!