Can anyone help who maybe has had experience of this?
My partner currently pays child maintenance at a set rate. I'm going back to work after having our first child together in a couple of weeks. He will be reducing his hours so he can be at home to look after our child. He is already on a 0 hour contract and some weeks he already only does about 12 hours, and sometimes none at all. We called child maintenance and they didn't seem to know what to do, they just seem to want it to continue how it currently is which is based on a year of him working on average 30 hours a week I'd guess.
He's now going to work an absolute maximum of 15 hours a week over two days, and this week there is no work so he won't have any but obviously the child maintenance payment will still come out (I will have to pay). It seems the only answer is for it to happen for a few months and then send the payslips to CMS, but what happens in the meantime? Does he continue to pay money he is unlikely to have?
Any help? I don't want to go into the wider context, but briefly - ex bitter about him moving on despite not wanting her himself. He looked after his child alone for over a year with no help after they split, now she won't let him see her, we have spent thousands in court for a 'dads type arrangement' of alternate weekends which is usually not stuck to. Kid goes to a private primary school. They have money so I'm not overly keen on sending over the odds when we are down to essentially one wage.