Child maintenance, do I or don't I?

[MommaBee97]

I have a 3 nearly 4 year old daughter, me and her father split up 3 years ago. For a year it took me to get a single penny out of him for his daughter (he never had her over night, and only for a few hours here and there)... Things are more set in stone now, he picks her up from school of a Friday and brings her back on Saturday morning (I know it's not a lot at all but he has 'work' a lot of the time). Currently he gives me £30 a week, but he's an electrician, self-employed, has his own business and drives a Mercedes Benz. It annoys me that he hardly has our daughter, doesn't take her on holiday or anything but then dictates to me about doing things with her! I'm In a new relationship, about to have a second child and it's my partner that keeps encouraging me to go through Child Maintenance.. What should I do?!

You should have contacted CSA / Child maintenance long before now.
I agree with your partner your ex needs to pay the correct level of maintenance. Think about it. He will spend more than £30 on a night out with his mates. You need to set things in motion straight away for your DDs benefit.

Why wouldn't you got for child maintenance?

Seems like a no brainer.
But something's holding you back. What?

i would on the basis that your child is young and he could stop paying.

It’s tricky with him being self employed as you might not actually get more via CSA. My ex is an electrician (employed) I get around £100 a week. But he’s known a lot of colleagues who purposely went self employed when they split so they wouldn’t have to pay as much maintenance. I’m not sure how exactly they do it and it’s very wrong I think, but he knows one who pays about £20 a week for two kids! He easily earns what my ex does if not more.

The car is probably a ‘business’ lease hire. So won’t prove he’s nessisarily earning loads.

You can’t make him have her more, so theirs no point going there. You could ask for more money and say you’re thinking of going via csa if he says no. But with how little he’s giving you I bet he knows he’d be able to avoid paying more somehow.

Although I’d probably still do it out of principle and if his income came back too phone I’d phone HMRC to say he’s fuddling his taxes and hope he gets investigated.

Going against the grain here. I'm so glad I didn't. It meant he got no fucking say in anything after we divorced. If I'd taken maintenance he would have used it as a fucking great tree to beat me with.

It looks like you've got nothing to lose given that he's barely involved (time or money wise) so I'd try to see if CSA can make it s bit fairer for you.

My ex used to be very abusive, not physically but I had to get a restraining order against him to keep him from harassing me, contacting me and coming anywhere near me. But my order has now expired and there's no reason to re-open one. I just don't want to go down the same route again where I'm constantly arguing with him, I'm pregnant so it's not good for me/baby and it's not good for our daughter...

Isn't the point of CSA that you won't have to deal with him personally? Wouldn't that make it better?

pros
you wont have to deal with him personally about money
cons
you are getting something now. if he is self employed it can be hard for the csa to assess and collect.

i think it might be worth deciding to involve the CSA the second he stops paying or is late is paying. it sounds like you think this is not a good time to rock the boat. given that you may not end up with more and indeed he may stop paying what he does voluntarily and "make them" get it out of him, so you end up without any money for a while, bide your time.