Child Maintenance Avoidance

[yosemite78]

My ex currently pays £81.82 EXACTLY in child maintenance. He is a director of his own agricultural business and For the last two years has told child maintenance he earns less than £140 per week. I was made redundant a while ago and I am struggling to provide for our son. In January this year he text me saying he was finally able to pay himself a decent wage and he could lift the payments. I’m still waiting and each time I bring it up he gets abusive and starts banging on about how much he had to pay before he set up his business and how much he paid in legal fees when we were in family court. I find it extremely draining as I feel he is just trying to control me. I know he has a second property he rents and this has never come up as additional income so he clearly doesn’t declare this. He’s got to be getting a minimum of £600 pcm for this and I doubt he has a mortgage on it. I really don’t want to resort to reporting him as I fear the repercussions for our son but it would mean he’d have to pay a little more. Does anyone know if it would show up with child maintenance if he genuinely was declaring it as income to HMRC? Also, he’s had this house for years so if he hasn’t declared it would child maintenance backdate any extra payments?

Chances are he also receives dividends - in fact probably the main way he gets money out of the company is via dividends.

Dividends are classed as unearned income by CMS. They aren't taken in to account unless you ask for a variation. They won't backdate a variation, so ask for one today.

Rental income is the same, and will be included only after you apply for a variation. He will have to pay based upon his gross income in his most recent tax return. That means that if he holds the property as an idividual (so not via a limited company) then he cannot offset the mortgage payments against his income.

@Collaborate thanks for that info. I’ll see what they can do next week!

@Collaborate I forgot to ask, do you know if you can apply for a variation at any time or can you only do it at your annual review? I suspect he’s taken dividends in January as that’s the month he started his company. Not sure if that’s how they work though…I know someone told you you don’t even have to take dividends ever and just live off the company?!

You can apply for a variation at any time.

If he is using the company to pay for his personal expenses, that is likely to be tax fraud.

Tell HMRC?

The Police & HMRC Investigations are made so much simpler by people whop have been p*d of by someone dobbing them in.

Worth adding that there may well be issues over 'notional income' As he's a Company Director he can decide how much to pay himself so if he is 'underpaying' himself they can take what someone in his position should earn.

Also The Company has a value and that may also fall to be taken into account.

CMS can tend to avoid anything difficult so if you get nowhere complain then go to The Independent Claims Examiner - I must have had over £500 out of them via the ICE

Not the best advice I'm afraid. HMRC get thousands of these tip offs every year. You have no evidence that he has evaded tax.