reduced income,reduced maintenance?

My partner has a child with his ex wife and has been paying her £150 per month child maintenance as was agreed by the two of them.

My partner and I have a son together and I have two children from my previous marriage.

He has been working full time but has recently reduced to working part time,therefore reducing his salary by 50%.

obviously this means things will be very tight for us and therefore has told his ex wife that he will be reducing the amount of CM by 50% from next month.

Obviously she has gone balistic about this and has been very aggressive.He has explained to her that this arrangement will only be temporary and when he earning more money then the amount will be increased again.however she is not happy with this and is threatening to stop him seeing his daughter unless he pays up.I suspect that she will start threatening other things aswell.

We used the csa calculator to work out how much he should be paying and it said £56 per month,he will actually be paying £75 per month.

So my question really is,is there anything she can do to stop him reducing his maintenance?

is there a court order?

Child maintenance only has to be paid at CSA rates.There's nothing his ex wife can force you to pay extra.

Child contact and child maintenance are treated separately under different bits of legislation.



If child maintenance was agreed as part of a Consent Order your partner is liable to pay the amount until either;-

(a) the court makes a variation (if the order is less than one year old)

or

(b) if the order is more than one year old the CSA makes an assessment. When the CSA makes an assessment the order ceases to have any effect after two months.

On the other hand if CM is agreed voluntarily and there is no court order it is entirely up to your partner and his ex what he pays. If there is no agreement either party can apply to the CSA.

no there was no court order,contact and maintenance was agreed voluntarily between them and payment has never been missed. she only allows him to see his daughter once a fortnight for 5-6 hours on a sunday.

In that case there is nothing to stop him from reducing CM.

As I said contact is treated separately under different bits of legislation. Good contact for children relies on parents working together so if there is a dispute about the level of contact the first thing to try is mediation. On the other hand if no agreement can be reached at mediation or threats to withhold any contact are carried out ,and the matter cannot be resolved quickly, your partner may need to apply to court for an order.

Thanks fiona. He knows that he is entitled to more contact but he keeps the arrangement as it is so as not to rock the boat. He was the one that left the marriage so understandably she is quite bitter so he does his best not to upset her any further.