Maintance payments should be like the USA

[OopsDearyMe]

Why is it that non resident parents are means tested? It drives me crazy. The cost of raising a child should be 50/50 and therefore each parent should be required to provide for 50% of the costs. No matter what. When you are the resident parent you have to beg,borrow or steal to provide for the children and yet if you choose to be a feckless parent and not work you only have to pay a palt amount. No consequences for you mate, its sick!

In the US you get a bill for what your child needs, regardless of what you can or cannot afford, if you don't pay you go to jail.

When will the UK make these feckless, losers pay for the closeness of their pants!!!!!

He pays what he can when he is employed. Please stop calling people whose circumstances you don't understand "tossers". It's rude and unfair.

I definitely think there ought to be a set "daily rate" paid by the NRP to the RP for every day they do not have their child. As with taxation this should be banded so under 45k earners at X and over 45k earners at 2X, or similar.

The current rate is too low, and allows for the NRP to not pay if they don't work. These NRPs should be billed regardless of work or not and the debt should rack up under their name.

I like the idea of non payment of child support showing up on credit checks.

'He pays what he can when he is employed. Please stop calling people whose circumstances you don't understand "tossers". It's rude and unfair.'

Not as rude and unfair as a deadbeat parent who doesn't do his/her best to support the kids they brought into this world.

CMS replaced CSA.

Have lots of new powers.

Don't seem to want to use them.

It's been 10 months and I've not had a penny and whenever I call them (weekly) they are absolutely fucking useless and contradict what the last person told me. It's a fucking sham.

Yeah my child only gets fed and a roof over his head when I can afford it, too. That's fair isn't it?

£7 a week if NRP on JSA. They won't take any debt out of JSA either.

My ex job hops - gets a job, stays for a month, quits or gets fired and goes back on JSA. So no Deduction from Earnings can be set up as it takes too long and by then he's somewhere else. Job Centre never check if he's been fired or quit etc, it's an absolute joke.

He's now working cash in hand in a pub. So no money for me, ever. The CMS are pushing for a Liability Order but as he sleeps on his mates sofa or his sisters or his Mums, that'll be useless too as bailiffs cane take any thing as he sees of No Fixed Abode.

These NRPs in the UK who don't work. How do they live?

And IF they ever get a payment. They'll take a chunk of it from me as a fee. NRP should shoulder all fees as they're the fuckers avoiding paying

Seneca In my Exs case he has a bunch of enablers - his sisters and mother. They know full well he's a deadbeat, they've admitted it to me. But support him anyway Can't fathom how his Mum can provide for her 32 year old son knowing full well he isn't providing for nor having a relationship with HIS child.

Seneca lots of them work cash in hand, self employed etc.

I definitely think there should be harsher punishments for non payers - loss of driving licence, passport, eventual jail. I also fail to see how the CMS can't operate like student loans- I only work part time but when I worked full time briefly to cover a colleague's absence the student loan repayment was taken automatically from my higher wage that month, no warning, no letters, no fuss! It was so simple and easy!

However, i believe that in USA they don't have great welfare provisions. Here a single parent on low income will get wages topped up with tax credit or benefit and this is how much you are expected to live on. Child maintenance isn't taken into account as it isn't guaranteed. In USA the resident parent doesn't have this benefit to rely on so goes back to work full time soon after birth, then has no choice but to work full time and use childcare- the cost of which is presumably included in the CM calculation.

I'm conflicted as punishment should be harsher but at the same time I don't think the American model works that well for single parents. We always know we have benefits to fall back on if we can't meet our share of the cost of raising a child but they don't.

I don't know what the answer is but it should certainly be far easier to collect the maintenance.

Would it work to have the CM system embedded in the tax system? Non-payment would effectively be tax evasion and going SE or into the black market economy could be investigated as tax evasion. Obviously it would need teeth and more people would need to be investigated for tax evasion.

It could also separate payment of CM from receipt of CM. So when someone was feckless and didn't pay the loss was borne by the tax system, giving an incentive to the government to pursue non-payers rather than having a half-hearted attempt to pursue it and then shrug at the RP.

The fail safe provisions do vary a lot from state to state in the US. Interestingly, in my state the same agency that provides welfare to single parents is the same one that provides child support enforcement, the notion being that the non-supporting father (it's almost always a father, of course) should not have the state providing the support that he is failing to give.

If NRP paid sufficient money to support their children, then BILLIONs could be saved in benefits every year. It's in the best interests of the families, the govt and every tax payer in the UK.

It's not just a moral outrage, but a fucking financial shambles that could actually benefit society, only the govt won't address it.

Maintenance are crap. Set up with them last month, ex is refusing to co operate and nothing is being done. My ex is sitting on half a million in savings but none of that will go towards my DD because it's not taxable. Why can't they take savings in to account. My ex refuses to work and I know he's doing cash in hand. Meanwhile I'm struggling and just getting by on benefits.

These NRPs in the UK who don't work. How do they live?

When my DH was made redundant from his financial career and was job hunting for 18 months, we almost lost everything. I was working part time NMW (no FT work available - I'd been made redundant from my own career 6 months previously) , he was on JSA, we got some benefits/allowances and used credit for emergencies.
He continued to be a part of his DCs life and we managed to keep a roof over our heads, but everything else was sacrificed - I even sent my own DD for extra time with her dad because the house was so cold as we couldn't afford the heating etc.

yes, we could have sold his house, and he could have moved miles away to get a job elsewhere - I would have had to stay local and move into a much smaller place with DD on my own so she could carry on seeing her dad, and of course, DHs DCs wouldn't have seen him as regularly.

I thought that maintenance payments aren't taken into account when calculating benefits. So you don't get a saving in benefits from CM actually being paid. Given the current situation of NRP apparently being able to avoid paying CM on whim and without recourse it is entirely right that CM isn't included in benefits calculations. Otherwise you'd have DC being thrown into utter poverty by the actions of one of their parents.

hibou my ExH hasn't cooperated for 10 months and they've done absolutely nothing, I've not had a penny and there hasn't been any punishment, they just keep sending "letters demanding payment"

The cost of raising a child should be 50/50 and therefore each parent should be required to provide for 50% of the costs. No matter what.

You can't order someone to pay what he is not earning and cannot earn. It sounds good but it just creates bad debts. What if he is in prison for other reasons? Awaiting trial and subsequently acquitted? In hospital? In those cases should he be accruing arrears?

And how do you work out what it costs? On what lifestyle?

I have no sympathy for the deliberate non-payers, but imprisonment for debt is a servile concept which should be done away with in those cases where it still exists.

I like the idea of student loans applied to child maintenance. minimum required per day, paid by government if not nrp. collected from later earnings if parent loses job (my ex was made redundant, we lived on his redundacncy and my savings) when parent is high eraner they pay more. this gives chance for life to happen. retraining for example, but also for job avoiders to have a debt against their name that will need paying.

and sort out the tax/maintence payments for those who are self employed.

(I thank god that ex is at least good at supporting his children financially)

It's easy enough to work out a min. payment 0 there are plenty of figures available for the cost of living which can be used. Then you can have a sliding scale of min. payment for those on benefits, with higher cont. for higher earners. That's how it works for parents who live in the same house as their kids, why shouldn't it work like that for parents who happen to live in a different house?

To think that there's any reason why a parent shouldn't support their child is just really bizarre. It's totally illogical, unethical and very, very, bad financial management for the rest of the country.

If the gov. can collect taxes reasonably efficiently, they can make this happen. If other countries can collect child support then so can the UK. There is no practical reason to let NRP to walk away and neglect their children.

If other countries can collect child support then so can the UK

The CSA/CMS works for many and support is collected. Unfortunately, these organisations themselves are just toothless tigers and have to refer back to the court system to be able to do anything. And that costs money.

I don't be.ieve they will ever close the self employment loophole because it would involve huge reform in how self employment is regulated and require far, far greater vigilantism by the HMRC. My ex, for example, opens a new limited company every couple of years and as soon as accounts and tax is due, he goes quiet and the company is legally struck off. He should have been picked up and prosecuted years ago.

It's never going to be a perfect system but it's about time the UKs paid on a night per night basis: our household has just lost over £500 for one extra night per year and the ex has made sure the absolute minimum has been stuck to;: our rent, utilities, days out, clothing, Christmas/birthdays, educational costs, car tax/petrol/insurance etc hasn't gone down for one extra night.