CMS and inheritance

[sanityisamyth]

Does anyone know if a £180,000 inheritance would be taken into account by CMS? ExH is retraining from a £35k salary to a £16.5k apprenticeship wage, and pays me £150 a month (calculated by CMS). This doesn't go very far, when I've got £850 a month childcare to pay to even allow me to work.

ExH has already e-mailed nursery to state, very plainly, that he is not to be held liable for any of DS nursery fees, in part or full, despite having £180,000 in the bank. Am seriously struggling financially and pissed off he has to pay so little.

CMS only takes wages into account when calculating maintenance unfortunately.

Have you check if you're entitled to any kind of help towards childcare fees? ie if your employer as a childcare voucher scheme and your entitlement to child tax credit?

I'm just appalled that someone would be content to see the person looking after his child struggling to pay for their care. i have no experience of maintenance support, but that stance seems blatantly unfair.

They can take it into account. Call them and ask for a variation order. My ex has recently decided to stop working and we get nothing now but he will be receiving a large inheritance on top of the one he had recently but has hidden away, soon (it's a complicated situation with the inheritances). The cms have said that they can investigate and calculate a rate based on this money. They are also able to take maintenance from pensions.

Thanks for the replies. It does seem blatantly unfair to me. He's chosen to retrain - he couldn't keep a permanent contract in his previous career (he didn't put any effort into it) so is retraining which seems sensible but he's chosen to halve his salary, using the £150,000 in his account to live on. I don't see why his son should go short because he's decided to drop his salary.

Interesting about the variation order. I didn't see anything like that on the CMS website - will give them a call tomorrow. I've called them before and been on hold for over an hour in the past so thought I'd check on here before going through that again!

Thanks Gran. My solicitor said he's a narcissist, based on his behaviour before and during the divorce. He was very controlling during our marriage so it doesn't surprise me if him, but it's not something I would ever do to someone else :( some people are just wired differently :(

Thanks CL I get some working tax credits. I was previously getting about £80 every 4 weeks but went on the calculator online and it said about £200 every 4 weeks so I updated the details but they're only giving me £23 every 4 weeks. It's worth having but don't know why it's only 10% of what was calculated or less than I got before! Will try again!

You will need a variation - phone them. Used to be they would assume interest on over £65k. You might be lucky.

Thanks needsahalo that's interesting too :) will do!!

If they can take it into account, can it be backdated? I sound really grabbing but I'm not - I'm just very skint and sick of having an empty fridge!! The inheritance was granted in May/June so he's had 6months of a lot of money in the bank

Re the £23 instead of £200 in tax credit: CMS take last year wage when calculating tax credit. Have you maybe used this year wage when you did your calculations?
Anyway, if there is a difference of more than £2500 between last year and this year estimate, update your file in consequence and they will also update your tax credit.

Thanks CL I think I sorted that out last night. They had my wrong income for last year so this year is an adjustment. I asked if the 3 and 4 year funding will make a difference too as my childcare costs will go down so I'll get even less from January! Great!

Glad to hear that :)

Hi OP did you manage to get through in the end? I thought they could apply a variation for savings etc so hopefully you were successful.