Child Maintenance Payments

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all feeling Christmassy! I do, for the children

Nevertheless, life goes on even during this festive period and problems and new questions still continue coming up.

This is our situation: We have two children and my husband pays maintenance for his other two children as per the CSA calculation. Currently the children stay with us for 31% of the year. My husband has a very good salary, which enables him to pay quite generous CSA. However, he has now been made redundant and his high salary ceases and therefore there will be no CSA. We as a family have other choices, I could go back to work from my maternity leave (having a 9 weeks old baby) and my husband can stay home with children. We will survive, but given my husband won''t have any income, there will be no CSA paid for his children.
HOWEVER - my husband has now been offered a position within the company where he could retain the salary he had, but the position is some 100 miles away and we would have to relocate. That means that we will not be able to see the children as much as we do now (the overnight contact on school nights would have to be dropped, as its impossible to drag the children hundreds of miles away when they have school the next morning). So apart from the emotional side we are facing the financial too - the Mum refused to move the contact so we could maintain the same level of contact without the disturbance to the children, so our CSA maintenance would go high due to having less contact. Does anyone know where we stand with the expenses of picking up and taking the children back as the round trip every time would be some 200 miles?

You want to do what''s good for the children, so they are supported financially, but you will be penalised... Firstly by not seeing your children as much as you could, and secondly financially. Or we can stay as we are and the CSA maintenance will be just the basic one. But we will see the children.

Sorry for the long ''essay'', I am probable just having a whinge about the impossibility of the situation...

Have a nice day everyone.

The non resident parent could apply for a variation if they have travel expenses, but it will not necessarily be awarded , especially if the NR parent was the one who moved away. The CSA would assess each case before making a decision to make a deduction.

I don''t think anyone can really advise you on what to do in these circumstances, it is a hard decision to make. Is there a possibility that he could find work more locally even if not on quite such a high salary?

I agree with maisymoos, the non resident parent or paying parent can apply for a variation to reduce the basic amount calculated by the CSA to take into account the costs of contact including travel. The factors the CSA take into account are set out in the Child Support (Variation) Regulations 2001;

www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2001/156/regulation/10/made

As far as I''m aware though, the CSA do not have the discretion to take into account which parent moved away.

When calculating a variation the first £10 or £15/per week of reasonable expenses is disregarded. The remaining expenses are deducted from the paying parents income before the usual calculation is made. However under the 2003 rules the costs of contact doesn''t include contact costs incurred during periods when the paying parent already has a reduction in the amount of child maintenance for overnight care. The rule is different for cases handled by the Child Maintenance Service.