CM in equal care

If you look at the legislation and the legal criteria which defines a NRP and a PWC, there is no mention of CB!!

Child support legislation gives regulatory powers to the Secretary of State. Part III, Child Support (Maintenance Calculations and Special Cases) Regulations 2000 states that a person who has day to day care of their child is to be treated as the non residence parent when;

"(a) a parent who provides such care to a lesser extent than the other parent, person or persons who provide such care for the child in question; or

(b) where the persons mentioned in paragraph (1)(a) include both parents and the circumstances are such that care is provided to the same extent by both but each provides care to an extent greater than or equal to any other person who provides such care for that child—

(i)

the parent who is not in receipt of child benefit for the child in question (my emphasis); or

(ii)if neither parent is in receipt of child benefit for that child, the parent who, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, will not be the principal provider of day to day care for that child."


Similar provision is made in the draft regulations for the new scheme

"69. The Regulations provide that where each parent could be viewed as a parent with care, the parent who provides less care will be treated as the non-resident parent. There will be a presumption in the first instance, that this is the parent who does not receive child benefit. That parent will be able to reverse the presumption if the evidence supplied of the overall care arrangements gives a different picture."

So CM will remain the same or not or do we just not know?

The bit about Child Benefit is the same but rather than going through the hassle of collecting information from non resident parents or employers the CSA will get it from the tax office and CM will be collected as a percentage of the non resident parents gross income.

Other changes include taking into account any other children who the NRP pays support for voluntarily outside the CSA, if there is a dispute about how many nights a child spends with each parent the CSA can assume it is one night a week and charges for applications to the CSA . There is to be no statutory maintenance liability where overall care is shared exactly equally.

Will CM still be based on the person who gets child benefit?
It is going to be very interesting to see how they will work this out for higher tax payers who will not get CB anymore. Wonder if it will still be based on who should get the CB even if they dont because they are Higher tax payers....it is getting more complicated rather than simpler!

It''s not all that different from now . The presumption in the first instance is the person in receipt of CB is the parent with care but that can be reversed with evidence eg which address is registered with school, doctors, receipts etc and the CSA can determine who is PWC.

bygones99 wrote:

Will CM still be based on the person who gets child benefit?
It is going to be very interesting to see how they will work this out for higher tax payers who will not get CB anymore. Wonder if it will still be based on who should get the CB even if they dont because they are Higher tax payers....it is getting more complicated rather than simpler!

There will also be the another situation where both parents are higher rate tax payers....

LB