Hello djlman
Thank you for your post. I am William, the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I can give you some information about child maintenance that may help you.
I understand you are in the process of being made redundant and you are unsure how much child maintenance you should pay from July. You have indicated that you may have a family-based arrangement in place with your ex-wife. This is simply an agreement between the both of you, so you may wish to negotiate with your ex-wife how much maintenance will be paid when your wages stop. A family-based arrangement is not legally enforceable but it is flexible so you can also decide whether you will calculate your payments using your contractual severance pay. It can also include other kinds of support such as buying food or clothing for your children.
You said that your current payments were based on the calculator on the Government website. We also have an online calculator which can give you an indication of how much child maintenance the Child Support Agency (CSA) may work out. You can find this at
www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/calculator.asp. You may wish to use this figure to renegotiate your family-based arrangement.
If you would like to use the guidelines of the CSA, they would work out child maintenance using your income, which includes earnings, money from an occupational or personal pension and tax credits. They use the amount of income left after deductions such as Income Tax, National Insurance and any money paid into a personal pension scheme.
The CSA has four different maintenance rates and the rate that is to be paid is dependent on your weekly net income. If your net weekly income is between £5 and £100 or you are getting certain benefits when your wages stop, a flat rate of £5 per week may be payable, no matter how many children are involved. To clarify whether the CSA would take your contractual severance pay into account you may wish to contact them directly. You can find their contact details and information about how they work out child maintenance online at
www.gov.uk/childmaintenance.
To help you to maintain your family-based arrangement, we have got a number of guides that you may find useful. We have a family-based arrangement form that is not a legally enforceable document but may put your agreement on a more formal basis. You can complete this together with your ex-wife and sign your names to show your commitment to your arrangement. We also have a discussion guide available to download from our website which can help you to plan your discussion with your ex-wife. If you feel any of our guides will help you, they are easy to print from our website at
www.cmoptions.org.
We have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful, it offers help and support to separated families. You can find this at
www.wikivorce.com/divorce/Sorting-Out-Separation.html.
If you would like to talk to our team in complete confidence about child maintenance you could give us a ring on 0800 988 0988. We also have some other useful tools on our website to help support separated parents.
