CMS high earners and pension contributions

[Wednesday123465]

My ex husband is employed as a company director (though not owner).

The latest CMS calculation came though at an amount appropriate to what I would expect them to earn. However, they have challenged this and the CMS have accepted this, and reduced their payments by nearly half. Also they reported his income as significantly less than they originally had reported it at

I suspect my ex husband is diverting money into a pension. I have no way to prove this.

is there anything practically I can do.

You can raise an additional income variation for ‘diversion of income’ on the CMS portal if you suspect that the percentage diverted is too high. Ensure you refer to the sudden reduction in earned income and what you estimate the percentage of his earnings is that has been diverted to pension.

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

I will try that on the CMS site.

I was looking at similar posts on here and it looked like people are allowed to divert large proportions of income in this way. which was surprising. I will try that though, I don’t have any evidence to present. Only that it seems the most logical explanation. Thanks again.

If he's paying extra into a pension to lower his assessable income, CMS usually allows that if it's a regular contribution, not excessive. But if it's new or unusually large, you can ask CMS for a variation review and provide evidence that it's being used to reduce child support unfairly.

Not to sound like an arsehole but it’s his pension and he can put as much money into it as he wants. How significant is the reduced payment?

It’s a hard one because technically he’s absolutely allowed to do that, if it is his pension.

It’s shocking that they can legally do this, in order to divert from their kids, when you think about it. Some of those will have children whose other parent will need to claim from the state. Really, some men are just shit. Poor kids.

This is allowed, though.

I don’t think OP is saying he shouldn’t be able to put more money into his pension. Just that doing so shouldn’t reduce the extent to which he supports his children.

He cant.

Just like he has to pay tax, he has to pay child support.

OP start now and prepare for a long battle. CMS won't help, but you'll have to go through their procedures then on to court.

The judge then has the power to decide if he is diverting income to avoid supporting his children. The judge can then order CMS to amend the amount he owes.