maintenance and childcare

[Paul5266]

in August of last year I was Parent with care, then we went to court my ex said she was moving to taunton and The judge decided she would be resident parent, two weeks after this my ex went to the CSA! In January she told me she was moving back to live with her BF, and that I could have the kids on the wednedsay night as well! I currently pay £407 a month, which after rent, food, bills, petrol (I work 50 miles from where i live) etc, I am left with £16 disposable income, I pay so much as My ex has lied to the CSA as to exactly how many nights i have the kids and despite reams of evidence they simply ask her and she say's no! My assessment was based on futuristic cnight calculations as historically i was seen as the parent! Anyway tonight she asked if i had put in place child care arrangement for after school on the wednesday As she says i should pay for this eventhough i do not know why childcare after school on a wednesday should differ to that of any other day! I feel that if I don't pay she will refuse me the wednesday night, however, if i do pay this will negate any financial benefit of having the children an extra night! I feel the only option is to go back to court ask for the court order to be removed and a new one put in place as she no longer lives 180 miles away, but no that this may upset the kids as she will tell them i am doing this, also I don't know where i would get the money to pay for the court fees! I can't get legsal aid as I earn to much and they do not take into account outgoings.... any advice warmly received! Please note i am a father that wnats to be part of his children's life and pay fairly for what they need!

I'm sorry for your situation but think there may be some information missing here. IME the CSA aren't all that useless, in fact they are rather good. All too often it's the bad we hear about.

OP, you will pay 20% for two DC of your net income (i.e. after tax/NI). So £380 is 20% of your stated £1900 take home. Looks like you may be paying a bit over this but you haven't mentioned whether you are paying any arrears too. This will all be set out in the table that the CSA send you. You should definitely get a reduction if they spend that amount of overnights with you though. Maybe you will need to get a change in the court order but by the sounds of it it will be beneficial.

On an aside, I am very very surprised at this kind of behaviour from a mother who is also a Primary School Year Head and a FE Teacher (hope it's not Englsh you teach ). I would have expected better.

You say that you commute 50 miles to work and this costs you excessively in petrol. Have you considered moving closer to work, you rent so no house sale to consider. Or how about applying for posts closer to where the DC live.

Hope you get things worked out.

I earn way, way less than the OP and I only get 55% of childcare paid for by WTC childcare element.

70% is the maximum entitlement, and it is reduced as soon as you start earning more than NMW.

If the XW is earning maybe twice what I am, she may only be getting about 25% contribution, not 70%.

I don't feel able to comment on this post. Taking the OP on face value I feel very sympathetic, but there are lots of inconsistencies in this post that suggest we don't have the full picture.

Sorry, I forget how much it has changed. When I was on my own with my daughter and her childcare costs were around £800 I earned £20,000 a year. I got £740 in TC... I didn't complain at the time but hardly surprised it has changed, how did they ever think that was sustainable??!

I've just done a tax credits calculator for if I was single to settle an arguement between a colleague and I. Based on a full time salary of 30k, and £270 childcare costs, I could claim £300 a month TC... So that's more than 100% of my childcare costs...

berkshirefem that's because it includes your child tax credit - the bit that everyone gets - as well as the childcare element of WTC.

Entitled to can be wrong, as well. Believe me, I earn £21,000, have monthly childcare of £1100 and I get about £550 in WTC.

I don't know which of the the two wtc or ctc pays for the childcare, I always just looked at the amount together and thought, ah, that pays for my childcare. What else is it for

That site was always 100% accurate when I used to use it. But I guess not for everyone.

CSA. Well, obviously I can only speak for myself, but here goes...

Ex started doing "proper" taxed, NI'd and payslipped work recently with an agency.

I passed the info onto CSA, as although many times in the past I've asked her for maintenance, she said to "do it legally", which I took to mean CSA (I'd been trying to get maintenance via CSA for a year or so now as she's always refused to voluntarily pay).

I chased the CSA about a month ago, they said they would have to call her three times (which could be done over a two day period) to give her a chance to volunteer info / volunteer to pay. If she refused (she refused), then they would fax HMRC to get her employers details, and a week later they should have said details.

On getting the info from HMRC, they then spoke to her employers, they confirmed that she works for them, and the CSA has recently faxed a request for her earnings.

My case worker says he hopes to have that by the end of the week, and thus to have the assessment done too. I'm hoping that she's already marked as non-compliant and they go straight to deduction from earnings.

In case anyone missed it, that seems like a sensible, professional and fair procedure for finding out the facts of the matter and acting on them.