child maintenance

Hey survive

Sounds like we are leading the same lives! My hearing is this week.

But on the finance front why have you not gone to CSA? Is it because he is self employed (sorry i forget!)? Have you thought about a interim maintenence order if your incomes are so different?

I agree that having them away for an extra night does not actually reduce your outgoings significantly but seems to be reducing your income significantly. Is the £100 1/7th of the CM?

If you have shared care then your outgoings for both parties are going to be similar, both need houses and pay bills etc.

The CM is to cover additional costs such as clothes, school trips etc. when the children are with each parent. So it could be argued that if a club, trip etc needs to be paid for, it will depend on which parent they are with to who pays for it.

It not actually meant to meet the housing cost of the children. Its assumed (rightly or wrongly) that both parents will cover their own housing costs.

If your ex is having the children two extra night then he could argue thats the additional costs incurred by having the children have increased by this amount and therefore your have reduced.

If there is a signification difference in the two incomes. (CM, WTC CB are considered income) then one party may be able to claim SM to cover the cost of housing, bills etc. You have to prove that the other person can 'afford' to pay.

unfortunately jay, many of us suffer with an imbalance of income and struggle to provide for the children on a shared care (or not shared care) basis. Spousal maintenance is a no no when a self employed ex can hide much of their income and/or give the new partner a large salary to compensate for their apparent lack of income. All perfectly legal. All a pain in the proverbial when trying to do the right thing by the children.

Been there done it, not saying its right just saying that the set up.

My daughter's father hasn't paid any CM since she was 2 and she is 12 now.

Being a single parent isnt easy and its the children who lose out.

I appreciate lots of your feedback, thankyou.

I would just like to clarify though, that children (as per the contact order.... not shared residency) will only be staying an extra 6 nights a month! (4 of which stbx was feeding them anyway and bringing them hiome for bed) How can this possibly justify a reduction in £100.00 per month.
Schhol uniform is not split, costs of shoes cost of all their club fees/activites and clthing for (which is a lot with 3 of them
)!

Whilst I appreciate some of you get nothing in the form of csa for your children on here. And my heart goes out to you. I feel it does not help my sittuation.... (sometimes I feel like I should be made to feel 'grateful' on this site when really I am going through a very nasty divorce (brough on by stbx adultery) who has turned into a lying, cheating,bad mouthing me to evryoner and anyone who will listen, trying to destroy me in any way possible, taking me to court for anything, sending lots of silly letters from SOL and totally being unfair finnnancially.....
Any way, sorry, I know there is always someone worse off, especially on this site, as there is in life. But, it still doesn't help your personal situation when you are angry or upset... otherwise we would all be walking about with smiles on our faces thinking 'ourselves lucky'.

Sorry, just needed to mention this as I often feel like the 'bad guy ' on here.
Whether stbx is having them more or not, stbx is totally lying about wages, expenses etc etc. And what I earn is less than a quarter of what stbx earns. Far less. And my total monthly income is less than half of stbx (albeit this is being disputed at present)


Survive
x

survive,
I don't think anyone was suggesting it was somehow 'wrong' to be asking what you should do now the ex has reduced the children's maintenance. It's tough trying to make ends meet in these situations, I know.

You're in a difficult situation. If he's self employed, going to the CSA can be a risk in that he can make much of his income disappear and make things even worse for you. Your alternative could be to threaten going to the CSA to see if that pushes him in the right direction but if it doesn't, you either involve the CSA or put up with it. My worry for you is that if he reduces maintenance and gets away with it (effectively), he can do it again and again and again.

So (((hugs))) as there are no answers to this one, I'm afraid.

Pull the kids out of all the clubs and guilt trip him into paying the extra £100 a month.
Use the kids to get at him to pay on his extra nights they'll be moaning at him about no clubs.
It's your only option you can't pay out what you ain't got.
No point in stressing about it the kids will have to go without because of his greediness.

All the best
Pete xx