Child Support with varying income

If maintenance for children is set by court based on income, but that income varies in subsequent years, (ie. company puts me on short time / gives me a bonus / salary increase or decrease), what is the mechanism for amending the support payments - does it require a new application to vary every year that income differs or is there a forumla that can be ordered by the court which amends payments based on the previous yrs income without the need to go to court each time? John

Dear John,
You mention the court's regarding your maintanence, normally the CSA deal with this direct and usally courts only get involved with orders of attachment to earnings. What did the court order and did you supply your annual earnigns and statement of earnings? as the court may of based your amount on average if the evidence was already provided. It is difficult to answer your question without an expalantion to the court or findings x

It was a global maintenance figure, for both children and ex, based on earnings at that time, although they have changed since and may well continue to change as my job may end this year / get reduced in hours.

When you pay a global amount amount there is no point in either party applying to the CSA because the global amount stays the same. For example, if the global amount is £100 (CM £60 + SM £40) and a CSA assessment reduces CM to £40, SM will increase to £60 so that the total amount paid is still £100.

If there is a substantial change to circumstances you would need to apply to court for a variation but it isn't worth doing for relatively minor fluctuations from year to year.

The change in circumstances are that when the global figure was set, ex had to be at home as one of our two daughters was below school age. Now both daughters at school and ex returned to work. However there is also a chance that my employment may end / reduce in salary in this year.