What does/should maintenance cover?

[ClaudoftheRings]

Apart from food, utilities etc, what is fair maintenance supposed to pay for?

SouthAm - I agree.

The OP asked what maintenance covers - I have explained where mine theoretically goes.

I think the sad part of it is, children are caught in the middle. If you have a profligate EX who has the DCs or a stingy small minded EX who has to pay maintenance - of what ever sex.If you have an EX who controls the access of children for more monies, or an EX who reduces time with his DCS, because the EX asks for more monies etc etc. Fault on both sides. Either parent who puts the new family first and makes the DCS feel unwanted, unwelcome. A step parent in either home, who makes it obvious to the old DCs that they are not welcome, they are a reminder of the new DPS past and will not just disappear, want to go on family holidays but not include them, etc etc

I work on the basis that I will provide for my DCs on my own and whatever EX gives is a bonus, not to be relied on and rarely discussed. If I can do it every month I put it in a savings account for each of them, but sometimes I do need to dip - for example, the summer is painful, holidays, childcare, new school uniforms etc etc.

bigfeet But if you apply your figures to the OP's case you've suggested that wrap around childcare, activities and holiday clubs comes to just under £4000 per child, with a 50% contribution being just under £2000 per child. That would leave over £9,000 in the OP's case to feed and clothe the child - surely more than enough?

The money your ex is giving you would seem to me to be falling short of half the costs for 3 DC. But that doesn't mean that all other NRPs aren't paying enough either. The OP's DP is paying a lot more than your getting just for one child, and then paying again for uniforms, etc.

Never said it was £4000 per child - his share for 3 is £4000.

Yellow you are missing the point - it is irrelevant the amount, it is a percentage of the income. If that equates to £25K per annum or as some poor sods get £500 per annum, then that is it. The CSa calculator states on the alleged figure that my EX supplies as his income he pays £7500 per annum - it does not cover his share of the costs but there is the issue - someone picks up the shortfall - either the tax man in credits or the other parent by working harder and giving up stuff!

There is such a tendency to say on this board, well you can bring a kid up for £200 pcm ( just a figure) and that should be split - so anything more is too much.

Yes you're right that for most people what is fair is a percentage of income, which may or may not be actually enough. I'd guess you would consider what you get to be fair enough if it was based on your ex's actual income.

But the OP's situation raises the question about whether there is an upper limit when the maintenance can be said to be sufficient to cover all reasonable regular child costs. So I was using the example figures you have to point out that in her situation the maintenance is quite possibly more than sufficient to cover all the costs in full (not just a 50% share of them).

Or to look at it another way - you get £7500 for 3 Dc, which you've shown does not cover half their costs. But what if you got £35k tax free? That would surely be more than enough wouldn't it? But, per child, that's what the OP's DP is paying.

DP and his ex always work out between them the 'real' cost of DSS, and then he pays her half of that.

So when DSS was little and in childcare, DP's payments were higher because he was paying towards that. Now he's in school and childcare costs are much lower, I believe DP pays less (even though he pays for half of clubs and things, it still works out cheaper)

I've no idea if DP pays more or less than the CSA amount, to be honest. He is a fairly high earner, so it's possible that it's less - but then his ex is a high earner too. She earns less than DP, but her joint income with her DH is more than DP and my joint income...plus her mum does a lot of the childcare for free, but should DP be paying as if that cost something? Even though he doesn't have the option to move close to his parents to help with childcare because that would mean moving away from DSS...there's a lot of Catch 22 in there...

They are able to work out payments like this because they both trust each other, but this is obviously rare and I think the CSA system is just a next-best solution, but there are so many problems with it. Plus it's compounded by the fact that it is inevitably more expensive to raise a child across two households than it is to raise it within one household.

In brief...it's never simple, it's a minefield of working out what's fair, but in OP's case it does seem like more than enough money! And even if her DP is a really high earner, he's already paying really high maintenance and his kids will be benefitting from his high earnings during their periods staying with him.