Child Maintenance

[whaisahumantodo]

Am I the only one who thinks the system is totally broken?

Nope.

Definitely not. It was broken when it was the CSA, and it's still broken now it's the CMS.

Yes, it is broken. It allows the resident parent to abuse the paying parent.

You're right. It 100% allows deadbeat dads to pay little or nothing for their kids through "self employment". I see the MRAs have arrived already. I don't know on what planet paying 11% of your income for one child or 16% for 2 children could be considered abusive of the paying parent, especially when it's reduced if you shack up with someone else's kids.

Do you know if 12% of your gross salary? It is like 20% of your net salary.

Do you know if 12% of your gross salary? It is like 20% of your net salary.

Do you know how much of my Salary goes on my kids? About 95% of it.

🙄

Do you just lie in wait for child maintenance threads so you can jump on with your nonsense? Bitter much?

You mean the house you live in, the electricity you use, the heating you use, the food you eat, etc. You have to count the delta they cost, not including your costs. It is a simple calculation. 26,0000 salary, 3% pension, take home 1,748. For one child, child maintenance is 260. That leaves 1,488 to pay rent, council tax, utilities, food, etc. Do the maths.

Yes.

To debunk the ridiculous assertions.

What assertions?

What an absolutely ridiculous statement.

My daughter's father is on just under £30k. His maintenance for having her 2 nights in every 14, does not come close to covering the breakfast and after school clubs, and holiday childcare that I wouldn't have to pay if he had her half the time. Nevermind clubs, uniform, clothes, trips, food, petrol, heating etc.

He actually dropped down from 6 nights in 14 to 2 in 14 when he realised that the amount his maintenance went up by was less than the amount he was paying for childcare. So was able to increase both my mental load and financial costs by deciding to see his daughter less.

Expecting my ex to pay for the children he willingly helped create. How abusive of me.

The system is so broken hes, manged to lie about his income and I haven't had a penny in nearly 10 years.

I did a calculation once of how much the dc cost me (based on how much extra rent I paid vs having a room for just me, split the bills 3 ways etc). Even allowing for what UC covers, his share of half of their costs was far more than he ever paid me. And that was before the COL crisis.
I wish I'd kept it.

Yes it is broken.

CMS have ample tools they could use, there is just zero political will for them to do so.

My ex had our children for 36 hours a fortnight. He thinks he's incredibly hard done by and that I'm basking in luxury on his dime. He now hasn't seen them for over a year - his choice. That means my earning capacity has been limited, as it was when we were married, because he was a very unengaged dad, so it all fell to me.

Newsflash: kids cost money. And not just for heating/electricity as taxpayer1 seems to think.

Perhaps we should all just be living in a cardboard box, rather than expect the non resident parent to financially support the children was was VERY happy to help make?

Yes it's broken. Allowing paying parents to reduce contributions for living with other people's children whilst their parent also receives payments for them. It is basically a no brainier for none resident parents to go self employed to avoid payments.

I’m closing my case. I’ve not received a payment in 6 years. My ex is on benefits but doesn’t have to pay so it’s pointless having it open.

However I do know people that get hundreds a month so it works for some.

Lol. Gaming the CMS to avoid payment should be classed as criminal child neglect. If it was, there wouldn’t be billions owed.

Yup, broken. 50/50 split, everything equally split. We pay swim lessons and other extra curricular activities, yet still pay £100+ maintenance to ‘resident parent’. Laughing all the way of the bank at our expense.

Don’t close it.

Just let it run.

Makes life much easier if their circumstances change later.

(I worked there briefly)

Hardly.

The debt side of CMS is separate to the current months payment side. Neither communicate. They’re supposed to set up separate payments for owed and current. They don’t. If owed does get set up, the NRP can whine about it (whilst living at home with parents and having 0 outgoings, and having racked the debt up over 7 years) and have it removed.

Unless you want to be on the phone twice a week, speaking to a different person each time, none of which have a what their actual job is/the procedures/don’t want to enforce anything/say they will do XYZ then don’t and the next person you speak to has no idea what you’re talking about as nobody ever makes notes.

And even then - nothing gets done. It’s exhausting.

And HMRC don’t bother to tell CMS for months. Then CMS take approx 12 weeks to set up a DofE. By then the NRP has job hopped again. It’s very simple to avoid paying.

In my experience CMS has worked for me.

My exDH was not paying the correct amount and much to his upset he had to pay the amount the calculator says...which I'm my case is a fair amount based upon his earnings and the fact that he has another DC and also lives with his DPs DC.

My DP pays CMS and the amount has reduced due to living with my DC.

In my case all NRP are employed and tax payers without the ability to change their income in the way that they would be if they were self employed. I can't see how this could be easily changed if people are not disclosing income.

You can insist it’s left to run. They’re not allowed to remove it if you insist it stays - if they try put it in writing.

And it can cause problems for non payers later.

I had the fun of telling a whinging chap that yes, the charge on his house was still in place so he would have to pay the £5k he owed even though his child was now 21. His plan to conveniently wait until no active chasing wasn’t being done completely failed.

They are shit though. I lasted 13 weeks working there. I knew more on day 1 from dealing with my ex than the guy training me or my boss.