Child Maintenance - Salary Sacrifice & Avg Nights

William,

Thanks but the link you provide doesn''t give any help at all.

They document/link needs to be clearer in terms of how salary sacrifice is considered or not as the case is.

It is such a common scheme used by thousand of employers covering possibly millions of employees that this issue and query is relevant to many parents paying CM.

I would be interested in this too. It may be within the rules but not within the spirit of what is equitable. Taking extra holidays, a bigger car and adding more to the pension pot when you get a big pay rise at the expense pf the children is morally wrong IMO.

Its an assumption to call anything morally wrong when you do not know anything about the circumstances of both parents and how much each parent puts into the pot to care for the children.

Agreed, but in this case I do know the facts of both side and when the non resident parent suddenly puts a huge amount into salary sacrifice, I believe it is wrong. Not only does it keep liability for child maintenance down but looking at income v need on form E the figures are now misleading. The scheme essentially allows you to skim off your salary and then perfectly legitimately say, "looking at my needs v income I cannot afford not to have the house sold in order to release capital to "close the gap""

Sorry to clarify, I am talking about a different case to the OP but same circumstances.

SH1968 wrote:

Taking extra holidays, a bigger car and adding more to the pension pot when you get a big pay rise at the expense pf the children is morally wrong IMO.

On that basis you could also argue that it is morally wrong to not take a second job and work your fingers to the bone so you can pay a bit more.

There is more to supporting your children than money alone.

Remember that some people will be paying money to an ex who may be a multi millionaire but control the number of nights they are with the paying parent just so they have to pay more.

It always seems to work best where both parents come to a mutual agreement between themselves.