maintenance

[doodles8008]

Hi, just looking for views on whether this would be unreasonable for a mother to request? For a private maintenance arrangement - quarter of all bills associated with the childs living (rent/ctax/elec/gas/etc) plus half of costs purely for the child e.g. clothing. That would mean the mother pays 3/4 of the bills - half being her share, plus half of the child's share - equal to what non resident pays. Does it sound greedy or fair- so that the child can remain in a similar standard of living?

I think this is difficult to answer without knowing the sums of money involved in the bills and the income of the people involved. Not that it's expected you should disclose this. I think there is a website giving some sort of guidance on how much maintenance is fair. Hope somebody comes along with advice.

Anything you get in a court order can be altered 12 months to the day after the court order is issued.
So the father could agree to this and 12 months later switch to CMS calculation.

To be honest, it sounds slightly arbitary. Why 25%? I'm not saying it should be more or less. Probably best to see what the CMS calcualtion comes to, and stick with that.

But if the mother was living alone without the child there then some of her bills would still be the same - rent, c/tax etc would not change. Electric, gas and water don't double because of a second person in the house although obviously they will increase. Also if the mother will be getting any state help eg tax credits then based on the logic shouldn't 50% of that money be knocked off what the father is expected to pay?

There's no harm in trying to request that, but my own thinking is that you're unlikely to get far with it.

Lonecat, is that true? In that case what is the point in the court order?

My solicitor informed me of this last Thursday he is an extremely experience specialist family law solicitor so I have no reason to doubt that he told me the truth.
He explained that CMS is there for the specific purpose of calculating maintenance and court dislike interfering with this.
His advice is always to use CMS calculator with regular reviews.

Wow thanks I had no idea