Hello Louiseh0307
Thank you for your recent post. I am Sarah, the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I understand your ex-partner wants to lower his child maintenance payments to you as he has debts and his income has reduced.
You say your ex-partner completed a statement of arrangement to pay a set amount to you which he has paid for four years. If your agreement is a family-based arrangement, it is not legally binding and payments cannot be enforced. However, there are no strict rules or formulas to follow, so you and your ex-partner can renegotiate what is included in your arrangement as long as you are both happy with this. It can be a combination of financial assistance and contributing towards other things like clothes, school uniforms and even sharing the care of your son.
If you have concerns about renegotiating your family-based arrangement and talking about finances, you may find our Child maintenance decisions: Talking about money guide helpful. This guide can help you work with your ex-partner to agree a suitable arrangement between yourselves. You can print out a copy at
www.cmoptions.org.
If you wish to follow the guidelines set out by the Child Support Agency (CSA), then child maintenance is worked out using your ex-partner''s net weekly income. If his income reduced overtime and he reported this change to the CSA, a reduction may be made based on these changes and a new figure would be calculated. You can find further information about how the CSA work out child maintenance online at
www.gov.uk/childmaintenance.
If you would like an indication of how much child maintenance may be payable using the CSA guidelines, you can use our online calculator. This is on our website at
www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/calculator.asp. You may want to use this figure as a starting point for renegotiating your family-based arrangement.
To help you maintain your family-based arrangement, 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-partner and sign your names to show your commitment to your arrangement. If you feel this will help you, it is easy to print from our website. We also have a discussion guide available to download, which can help you plan your conversation with your ex-partner.
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.
To find out more about how Child Maintenance Options can help you visit our website or if you would prefer a friendly and confidential chat, please call us on 0800 988 0988.
