CMS - are these minimum payments?

[Sealina]

Hi - hoping someone can point me to any credible resources on CM payments.

I have full residency of my 3 children and their father has no contact (court ordered).

I believe he should be paying the basic rate of CM, being 19% of gross salary (net of pension). He is diverting income by making very high pension contributions so I will make an application to the courts on basis of excessive diversion of income. He is very controlling and a court has already found several findings against him re domestic violence.

As I will go through the court re CM payments, I will be asking for a fixed amount so he can't keep playing games with pension etc. I want to ask fornjust over the basic rate of 19% (21%) on the basis that at least 75% of my salary is used to support our children and their lifestyle (ice cream on weekends, uniform, occasional meal out to celebrate events, mortgage, clothes etc etc).

Is there any legal ground or credible source of info that sets the cms payments as the 'minimum' a parent is expected to financially support their child?

When we were raising them together, he would also have been paying around 75% of salary. It seems so unfair on the kids that his choice to dump them now impacts their lifestyle as well as having to deal with the emotional impact of being abused by him.

I'm afraid your entire approach is wrong. You cannot go to the courts for child maintenance. They can only get involved if his income is high (more than £156k per year) or in certain other special circumstances which don't appear to apply in your case. Even if his income is over £156k per year, the courts stick to the CMS calculation (19% of gross salary in your case) unless his income is over £650k per year.

If you want him to pay you will have to go through the CMS who will decide the amount based on their formula. He can pay more if he wants, but the law does not require him to pay any more.

Does the OP mean she is taking him to tribunal and wants to argue for 21% at the tribunal? I didn’t think you could do that.

What is a “high percentage” of pension costs? I’ve looked into this and if someone has not paid into a pension and is now much older say 40-50, then the CMS allow them to make higher pension contributions (usually approximately half their age so 20-25%)

You can argue 19% is minimum, but it’s also the maximum required, also the expected amount. I don’t think you’ll get far arguing that point unless as prh says, he’s on a very high wage.