Ex-husband goes self employed - child maintenance question

[Turner14]

Hi all,
Hoping someone can give me advice please. My ex-husband is going self employed after being made redundant recently. Our relationship is terrible and there is no positive communication despite trying really hard for it to be otherwise. I am trying to hope he will do the right thing and continue to support his children but I am very concerned that child maintenance will drop to nothing as he controls his earning with accountant girlfriend.
We have three children one of whom is disabled. I care for the children 90% of the time and because of my disabled daughter I am unable to get work and am responsible for all the school holiday time. I have a hefty mortgage and I am beginning to worry that my ex-husband will stop paying child maintenance.

Does any one have any advice in this area and ways I can ensure payments are received. CMS have proved to be quite unhelpful to date.

Thanks in advance.

My ex went self employed to avoid paying child support and the CMS told me they don’t have the resources to chase after people like him who don’t cooperate - so I get nothing .
Hope you have better luck .

Cm will look at the wage he pulls himself each month, he will no doubt also be paying himself diverdens, these aren't automatically checked, you have to ask child maintenance to check for these on top of the normal wage. What normally happens is they send you a form think it's called " additional earnings form" or something similar. They consider diverdens the same as the wage he pays himself.make sure you ask them to check and take into consideration diverdens as this is an easy way if him getting around the system and paying you less.

Thank you for that info JustmeandtheKIDS2. I think I just need to be fully aware of all the things you have mentioned and any other helpful information and just hope and prey CM help in what ever way they can. It seems to be a hit and miss area grey area that really needs cracking down on. Thinking of all those who struggle because of this.

Get in touch with Gingerbread also but sadly lots of NRPs use their self employed status to reduce their maintenance. If you're relying on it to pay the mortgage you could find yourself in difficulty

Your right you need to know what your talking about when you speak to them as it's a bit of a gray area they often tell you conflicting information.
Also they tell me that some some self employed people are technically seen as employed. I think if your a director of your own company, technically your employed by your company there for they can put a ductions of earnings order on if they decide not to pay. This is where I am withy ex husband, we will see if this produces the money he owes.

For most self employed it's better to organise a payment directly rather than using cm because their systems don't work for self employed really. Unless he indicates he is stopping paying I wouldn't bring it up. Meanwhile I think you need to work out how you can be independent of him by working out how to work - it's hard with a child with disabilities but not impossible, I found a flexible employer who didn't mind me fetching my dd from school, I could bring her to work and time off for appointments was no problem - I don't earn a lot but it's worth working for the right person

My exp went self employed and never paid a penny. Now £18k in arrears. It's a loophole which many use unfortunately. I've not had a penny for 8 years.

My partner is self employed and he has to pay for his daughter.

He pays the correct amount on his earnings but when she thought she could get more for some reason she went to cms. She had a shock when they said he should only be paying £17 a week on his ‘wage’.

He puts a huge amount of expenses through the books and mileage. As well as he pays divs instead.

If he wants to avoid paying he can being self employed.