Just curious

A divorcred couple with 2 children and a shared residence order, mum with the children slightly more.

Both parties have had to provide a home for the children, both parties feed their children, buy clothes and everyday necessities for the children, both parties share the cost of school holidays for the children. Both parties look after their children when they are sick. No costs for child care for either party are applicable at the moment.

Both parties have full time jobs, mum earns quite a bit more than dad. Mum also claims benefits of up to £250. per week.

Dad who has the children almost half time is taxed as a single person with no commitments.

Amazingly, CSA is still due to mum. I can appreciate that many fathers do not support their children, but the system seems to be a little one-sided at times.

yep - the system is set up to assume that the children stay with one person most of the time and that this person, having less opportunities to maximise their income, is the lower earner. It doesn't cope well will situations outside of this (increasingly outdated) "norm". It probably needs reworking. I can't imagine there will be a simple equation that will suit all circumstances though.

I think the system is set up on the assumption that the children live with one parent most of the time. However, I don't think there is an assumption that this parent is the lower earner. It's more that (given that they assume the children more or less live with one person) they think both parents should contribute to the children's costs. The principle is that you shouldn't be able to get away without paying towards these, even if the parent with care can manage without you doing so. But, as you say, it doesn't deal very well with fully shared care.

Best wishes,
Sadie

I think if attempts at changes were made to benefit both sides in a shared care situation, we would get an outcry of 'vulnerability' claims from the children's charities, women's charities and possibly also the think tanks that deal in social equality issues.

The simple fact of the matter is that women earn less than men, despite legislation that makes it 'illegal' for doing the same work that men do. Women are most likely to be in lower paid work, particularly in caring professions and where they are in higher paid work, will have probably missed out on promotion opportunities as a result of taking maternity leave and/or going part-time for a period. And whether we like it or not, it is usually the mum that children end up living with when relationships breakdown. So even in a shared care situation, it is more than likely that mum will be worse off financially than dad in a 'pound in the bank account' way.

For these reasons, I think the few situations that arise where shared care is genuine (and many of you know what I think about 'genuine' shared care as opposed to 'reducing maintenance liability' shared care!) and the non-resident parent (in child maintenance terms) is earning less than the parent in receipt of child benefit (the 'trigger' to be able to claim through the CSA), it is unlikely that you would ever get a Government to legislate from a financial perspective in favour of 'shared care = no maintenance'.

Of course, what we could go back to is legislation that takes into account, at some level, individual circumstances by the CSA. I think, however, that most NRPs who pay on this system still (and there are a good number of them out there) would much prefer to be on the post 2003 system that we have now (straight percentages of income).

The biggest issue is that we all see our financial situations from our own perspectives and struggle to understand why we should fit into the 'one size fits all model'. Unfortunately, a Government really only can legislate for 'one size fits all' which means there will always be very obvious winners and losers. I suspect that for most of us, however, the system works well enough.

I can appreciate everyone's points of view.

However, given 'dad' did all he could to keep the family together, particularly for the children who have felt the separation deeply, it seems to me that he has been dealt a bit of a duff hand!

More importantly to him however, is that fact that he has a shared residence and the boys are happy to be with him.

Both parents income was used in the equation pre 2003 (CS1) but the formula was very complicated.

I would question the assumption that most NRPs that are still on CS1 would prefer to be on CS2 with its straight percentages. The CS1 gives NRPs much more control and is far more generous with allowances for second families. It did however take less account of children staying with both parents as to get any reduction they had to stay a minimum of 2 nights per week averaged throughout the year. This led to many PWCs carefully totting up to make sure they got the maximum number of nights they could without the kids but the magic 104 figure was never quite reached.

The daftest thing to me was that the CSA works on nights not days when it comes to deciding who gets the dosh. Having the kids during the day can cost a fortune but when they are safely tucked up in bed at night they don't cost anything!

It has to be remembered that the CSA was set up to control the cost of benefits paid to single parents who had split from their partners, it was never intended to help children or families post split.

I think the only real winner was Mark Thatcher who flogged his mum the computer that they are still trying to fix.

Stepper,
It's a woman's world when it comes to divorce hun.Unless the fella completely fecks the ex wife and kids over by being a complete bxstard and completely abandoning them.That's how the system works.
All the best
Pete