Is this true? WARNING DM link "Fathers to be hit by rise in maintenance..."

[TotalBummer]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244303/Fathers-hit-rise-maintenance-children-following-sweeping-new-reforms.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

If it is, we are going to be in the sh!t AGAIN. Merry Christmas to all those Fathers who actually pay through the nose and can't afford to look after the family they have living with them AND we have our Child Tax credits taken off us to give to his ex who never let him see his DD in the first place.

I know there will be Mums out there who are shafted by their exes but it is ones like my DP and my kids who are being destroyed by the CSA. Bankruptcy looms.

Sorry - It just never ends. Money, money, money. They will take our house and our kids will be on the street and they DON'T CARE!

Can't he and you take on second jobs then?

No man should have a second family if he cannot afford it. The primary responsbiility is to the first family. Also why did he marry or enable a woman to become a housewife? Not surprisingly it means not enough money and is not fair on children.

That doesn't answer my question. Thanks Xenia! Thanks for not answering my question. How dare you judge another persons lifestyle! Easy when you are rich.

Oh and HOW exactly since you know my entire life do we both go out and get second jobs?????????????? The new CSA would then take even more money off us. I don't actually want an answer from you anyway since you know everything anyway and have your life well and truly sorted. High and mighty. Nice. I am obvs not upper class enough to be on Mumsnet anyway. Byeeeeeeeeeeeee

Thanks for not answering my question.

The questions was "is it true"? It seems that parents (not necessarily father of course as plenty of men have their children living with them after divorce) may well have to pay more if they use the CSA but they can choose not use the CSA and agree between themselves.

Second jobs? I know loads of couples who have to do that if money is short - bar work at weekends or you can put notes in local doors offering sevices like cleaning. Lots of people do that around here as times are hard.

If you want how to avoid paying for your children the classic way men do it is they give up work with the second wife and child and they do the childcare. That way their CSA payments are virtually nothing - £10 a week under the new scheme and the second wife works full time but not a single penny ofh er earnings are counted so you can therefore ensure your first family/children live in poverty through that clever trick.

Ignoring the bun fight, the plans to change child maintenance rules have been coming for a while.
AFAIK they are starting to roll the change from net to gross salary for people who have 4 children or more (and if they use the CSA to pay money between parents there will be a further charge). Then 3 children, then 2 then finally 1.
The sting in the tail is that the NRP will have to pay up to the age of 20 rather than 19 as now.
They plan to have this all if effect by 2014.

Xenia strikes again :o

Ignore her.

Anyway, I dont really agree with your POV OP. You dont get tax credits for his DD because she doesnt live with you. Her mum presumably has bills to pay too. You knew he had a child when you got with him. But now he shouldnt pay for that one because he has a family with you?

Your partner has 3 children to support on one wage, regardless of the fact that one lives elsewhere. If money is short, then go back to work. Childcare can be expensive but you could work nights or weekends.

You willingly added more children to the budget so cant complain that there is not enough money for your liking.

One of the explicit aims of this reform is to get people to try & come to their own arrangements. So this is what I'd try first.

If your partner is already paying a fair share and the extra would literally put you all on the streets then it makes no sense for his ex to demand it either. Sure she gets extra for a while. But if it is indeed true that your DP would go bankrupt then she gets nothing. It would be cutting off her own nose to spite her face.

The problem with maintenance is that fairness depends a great deal on what side of the fence you are on. My ex pays me £50 a month, to her that's fair as she thinks that is all she can afford. To me it's unfair because I spend more than that per month on train fares sending them to visit her. So from my pov I'm not only getting no contribution, in fact I'm subsidising her!

In your case OP you will see these changes as blatantly unfair. His ex will probably think it's perfectly fair.

The Mail link is all 'if' this and 'maybe' that, so I'm thinking it's their usual scaremongering. Can't find the story on the Times or the Guardian. I'd look for the actual facts before you panic: you won't find them in the Mail.

yes, the CSA will be raising the monthly payments for the non-resident parent AND taking money off the resident parent. The DWP / Condems are disgusting for charging people to use the CSA.

There is a good chance it will cause my XP to flip out and come after us when his monthly payment is raised. I'm tempted to say take the whole charge off my money so XP doesn't get angry.

I don't understand how bankruptcy looms if his payments go up by £10/week. Surely you plan your financial lives on how much his income is after his maintenance payments are made.

Why are you so resentful that he's contributing towards raising his own child?

"The pay through the nose" phrase in the first phrase seems a bit unfair. He probably just pays what he is required to pay and that is usually a huge lot less than chidlren actually cost. Many of these people could never have afforded a third child with their first wife but think they can go on to sire further families and yet had they stayed in the first marriage even they would not have had the funds to keep the first family. First families should always have priority.

I see where the op is coming from regarding the tax credits issue. The CSA currently count all household tax credits (including child and disability tax credits) as the income of the non resident parent along with any other earned income.

Therefore, a parent with care who uses the CSA gets not only the tax credits they are personally entitled to but also a portion of those paid to the household of the other parent. In some cases step-children of a non resident parent are actually paying part of the maintenance through their tax credits.
It does not matter who the tax credits are paid to or for, and this aspect of the legislation has been much criticised and challenged.

While it is arguable that working tax credits paid to a non resident parent could reasonably be classed as income. It does seem unfair that child tax credits including any disabled child tax credit supplements paid to their partner or spouse should be taken into consideration.

As far as I have read, the new rules will not include any tax credits paid to the household of a non resident parent. Only their earned gross income will be used in future to calculate maintenance.

The new scheme seems designed to encourage parents to reach private maintenance agreements between themselves and to reduce the administrative burden on the CSA wherever possible.
Should parents be unable to reach or keep to an agreement then they can use a collection service which will incur a charge for most (but not all) cases.

Whether it will work in practice however remains to be seen. I suspect that as usual with these things there will be some on both sides of the coin who end up better off and others in a worse position.

In some cases step-children of a non resident parent are actually paying part of the maintenance through their tax credits.

But the NRP gets a reduction in maintenance for the step children, so it's swings and roundabouts really. One of the reasons tax credits are used as income is because some NRPs try and avoid maintenance by becoming a SAHP in their new relationship - using tax credits as income gets around that particular loophole in some cases.

Sadly there will always be parents out there who will find and exploit loopholes - it will be the same with the new scheme.
I see this from both sides as I have an amicable private arrangement with my ex which works absolutely fine. However my DH's ex stopped their private arrangement and went to the CSA when she realised that by doing so she'd get a share of my son's disability tax credits.
Even though the CSA do give a reduction for step children, because my son is classed as severely disabled DH's ex is slightly better off as a result.
DH and I both work, the previous arrangement he had with her was not shabby and her maintenance has only increased by £2 per week due to my DS's tax credits.
Now is that fair ? She went to the CSA not because she needed to, but out of spite. I know the sum is only a small proportion of DS's tax credits but to me it's the principle that counts and not the figure. Whatever way you look at it, those tax credits are not DH's earned income and they should not be used as such.
Under the new system she would not be able to do what she has and if she refused a private arrangement and insisted on CSA involvement she would be charged for the privilege.

She can have the CSA do a legally binding assessment (which the NRP will be expected to pay directly to the PWC) for a one off £20 charge, which will be re-done every year with up-to-date data from HMRC (supposedly anyway, I'm not convinced it will work any better tbh). Ongoing charges (20% for the NRP, 7% for the PWC) will only apply if the NRP doesn't make the assessed payments directly and the CSA have to collect the money on the PWC's behalf.

On the question of fairness, I don't really think it's fair that my XP gets a reduction (when he actually pays, which he hasn't for 6 months) for his step children who are not his legal responsibility, resulting in his contribution per child being higher for his SC than his bio children. I also don't think it's fair that he can choose not to work and as a result of being re-married and ineligible for means tested benefits not even be required to make the base £5 pw payment. If taking their tax credits into account means there's a tangible consequence for behaviour like that then I'm all for it.

Wow, just how bitter are you.
?

It is hardly the child's fault that

a) they were the first
b) their parents split up
c) One of their parents choses to have a second family.

optimisticpessimist if she does that then fine, neither me or DH will have any issue with it. He always has paid his share, on time and willingly - his ex chose to sever their agreement for no reason other than to get her hands on my DS's disability money.
Actually I think she was rather disappointed with the result as I'm sure she thought it would a bigger increase.
How well the HMRC involvement will work will be interesting - it should in theory mean that assessments are more up to date and relevant which should be a good thing. Practice however is a different matter !
As for the charges - I think they have got that wrong and I believe that charges for the CSA collecting should only be levied on the NRP if they don't pay. A PWC should not have to pay a charge because their ex hasn't stuck to an agreement.

The fact remains that if the absentee parents wishes they can contribute nothing or next to nothing to their existing children. The can choose to have more children and leave their initial children to rot. The parent with care always has to foot the bill.

When I married my husband who already had a son it was made very clear to me that any children that we would have ( and we have a fair few) could not negatively impact his existing son. He had agreed with my his son's mother that she would stay at home until he started school and Hereford he would financially support her. When I came in the scene money was very right and I knew that. We were not ready for children then but I knew that we could not afford any children until his son's mother was ready to go back to work. I knowingly chose to marry a man who had a chick and therefore I knowingly chose to for my life around that child.

We get a tenner a week from ds's father, who married again and lied, I am sure, about his income.

I don't care about the money

I care more that he wanted to avoid any commitment to ds at all costs and didn't see him for 6 years

and sees him now once a month, but has no contact in between, and wants token photographs of 'his child' and to delight in the beauty of my son whom I raised entirely alone.

That makes me cross. Still, knowing that he is probably aware that he could give us an awful lot more, if he chose, without it affecting our entitlement to anything else, and the fact he chooses to stay with his tenner a week, makes me slightly

I do not know why women marry these men, one of the things I love about DH is that he was so commited in every way to his son and ex. I knew that one day he would show that commitment to me and our children - and I was right .

Xenia your sexist comments are beyond unreasonable. You'd never say that to a woman in the same position.

I agree with Xenia and it isn't often I can say that