Child maintenance and careers allowance

[zebra]

I can't find a definitive answer for this online, I wonder if anyone has experience.
Ex pays child maintenance for DC, it is on a private arrangement. He pays £100 a month. He's retired and on a private pension of at least 50k. He's not yet state pension age.
He's remarried, his wife has 2 DCs which he supports. They get careers allowance for one of her DCs which is paid to Ex (not wife).
Our DC is a teenager and the maintenance arrangement has not changed since we split a decade ago.
I approached ex recently as DC has asked to go on an expensive school trip, and to ask if he'd be able to make a contribution. We are struggling financially, he to my knowledge is not. His attitude was that he's paying his maintenance end of.
I pointed out that his maintenance contributions were probably far below what the CSA would assess him for, and although I felt it a fair amount to pay, maybe a little flexibility would be appreciated for things like this. His response was that because he is getting careers allowance for his DSD if I ever decided to challenge what he was paying it would go down, and what he was paying was out of goodwill!
Anyhow a look at the gov. calculator shows he should be paying about £300 a month, but as soon as you tick the box for careers allowance it goes down to £28 a month! Careers allowance is only paid to people with an income under £100 ish per week, but this apparently doesn't include private pensions so he still gets it. Maybe ex is being a nice guy after all, and I should consider myself lucky to get anything for DC 😮.
Anyone any experience of this? Surely it can't be correct that someone with 4k a month income only has to pay £28 for their child?

I don't know the answer sorry but just wanted to say what an absolute cockwomble he is!

Ring CSA and ask or seek legal advice. Mydp regularly pays for school trip ontop of his well above CSA maintenance but apparently he still doesn't pay enough! Not sure why some guys get a lashing for doing what they should and others don't even do the minimum.
I don't think your being unreasonable asking for a contribution to her trip tbf.

I think that is probably the amount he would need to pay if he was just receiving carers allowance ! I think they can take £7 a week from benefits. However the fact that he has the huge private pension coming in should mean you get a lot more. I would go through CMS straight away.

Thank you, probably the easiest way is to give them a call tomorrow.

I think the answer is:
The fact he receives Carer's Allowance means that under the statutory scheme he would default to being on the flat rate (£7).
However, it is recognised that the statutory scheme doesn't work for complex situations like this one and so you would apply for a "variation".
A variation can be requested if a non-resident parent has gross weekly income of £100 or more which would normally be taken into account, except for the fact they are paying the flat rate because they receive a qualifying welfare benefit.
Hope that makes sense?

For more advice I'd recommend the Gingerbread Single Parent Helpline Freephone 0808 802 0925

Thank you Mrssquiggler

If you ring cmo they may be able to tell you the facts