earnings of parent with primary residence

Hi

Does the salary of the parent who has primary residence ever come into account when calculating maintenance payments? Is it irrelevant how much they earn?

The CSA online calculator only asks for the weekly net income of the person who should pay maintenance.

Happy to explain further if that doesn''t make sense!

Thanks
corncrake

No. They only take into consideration the NRP''s income.

Sorry but no the income of the resident parent isn''t considered.

Personally I think is a weakness of the system and often causes resentment from nrp. If both incomes were consider it might led to less comments about paying'' minimum'' or ''only'' csa rates.

Maintenance imo should be equal. Your responsibility to provide for your child shouldn''t lessen or increase based on the RP''s income.

I shouldn''t be made to pay more towards my child''s upbringing because i have been to uni and hope to get a good job, even though i do provide an awful lot more than stbxh.

In the same respect, if RP''s income came into it and affected maintenance you would probably find a fair few RP''s leaving employment so the NRP''s maintenance goes up.

What isn''t taken into account is the fact that the resident parent can claim child benefit, child tax credit and working tax family credit if working 16 hours a week. This can be quite a considerable sum and is tax free. In addition, there is child maintenance from the father.


Even if the father is sharing residence of the children up to 50% of the time, they can expect no help from the State, unlike the mother. Some dads therefore feel that they pay twice, once when the children reside with them and again when the children reside with their mum. Dads can also have the additional expense of providing their children with extra clothing and shoes etc when they are residing with them.

None of this is of concern to the CSA whose job is to collect payment from the NRP. They claim that their main concern is the welfare of the children, but they have no interest in establishing the payments are spent directly on the children.

Nothing is black or white and every case is different. In my opinion, parents should be left to decide their financial obligations towards their children between themselves, using the Courts if necessary when a sensible agreement cannot be reached. The CSA is past its sell-by date. There must be more efficient ways for parents to share the costs of bringing up their children than the present system which seems to lead to resentment from both the ''resident parent'' and the ''non-resident parent'' - terminology which is also past its sell-by date.

Which CSA scheme are you on? My understanding is if a case predates March 2003 the parent with care''s income is taken into account and a notional contribution towards maintenance is calculated which may reduce the amount of child support the non resident parent pays.

8. For the purposes of paragraph 5(2) of Schedule 1 to the Act, the amount of M (net income of the parent with care) shall be calculated in the same way as N is calculated under regulation 7 but as if references to the absent parent were references to the parent with care.

www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1992/1815/regulation/8/made

Otherwise if you are on the current scheme the parent with care''s income isn''t taken into account.