Hi Listen
Thank you for your post. I am William, the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will try and provide you with some information that may help answer your query.
If you wanted to use the current statutory rules, child maintenance is worked out using the paying parent''s gross income, which is income before Income Tax and National Insurance are taken off, but after occupational or personal pension scheme contributions are taken away. In most cases this gross income figure comes from information given to HM Revenue & Customs by the paying parent, their employer or a third-party such as an accountant.
The Child Maintenance Service have four different maintenance rates and the rate that is to be paid is dependent on the gross weekly income of the paying parent. The four different rates are as follows:
Basic rate is for paying parents with a weekly gross income of between £200 and £799.99 (and Basic Plus for parents with a gross weekly income of £800 or more).
Reduced rate is for paying parents on a weekly gross income of between £100 and £199.99.
Nil rate is where parents are in full-time education, under sixteen, in prison or living in care. In cases worked out at the Nil Rate, the paying parent currently does not have to pay child maintenance because their gross weekly income is less than £7 a week or because they receiving certain benefits
Flat rate is when paying parents pay a flat rate of £7 child maintenance per week, no matter how many children they have, if their weekly gross income is between £7 and £100. This also applies if the partner they live with is in receipt of Income Support, income-based Jobseeker''s Allowance or Pension Credit. If child maintenance is set at Flat rate because the paying parent’s income is £100 a week or less, the Child Maintenance Service does not take shared care into account at all.
You can find more information on how the Child Maintenance Service calculates child maintenance by visiting Gov.uk at
www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-work...ut-child-maintenance To give you an indication of how much child maintenance that may be calculated if you were to use the Child Maintenance Service, we have an online calculator on our website at
www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/
You mentioned that you are now divorced. If you set up a
Consent Order (or a Minute of Agreement) during your divorce process, you may wish to check the terms and conditions to see what you legally agreed to pay. To do this, you may wish to seek legal advice If you do not have access to a solicitor, you may wish to contact the Citizens Advice Bureau (
www.adviceguide.org.uk) as they can provide information on legal topics.
If you agreed child maintenance via a family-based arrangement, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, both you and your ex-wife have the flexibility to decide the terms of your own arrangement, such as the factors that you will take into account when calculating child maintenance
A family-based arrangement does not need to be all about money although many parents do include regular contributions. Your arrangement can include other kinds of support, such as you directly paying for things that your children may need. Family-based arrangements are not legally-binding, however, many parents prefer them because of their flexibility and ease of which they can be reviewed (such as if you or your ex-wife’s circumstances change).
We have a range of tool and guides on our website (
cmoptions.org/en/toolbox/index.asp) that you may find useful, such as our discussion guide that you can use to plan your conversations around child maintenance.
For more information on the ways to set up child maintenance, please visit our website at
www.cmoptions.org Alternatively, you can call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on a Saturday. We have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful. It offers help and support to separating and separated families. The link is:
www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation
Regards
William
