Hi scfisher
Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will provide some information that may help answer your query.
If you wanted to use the statutory child maintenance rules that are employed by the Child Maintenance Service, when a paying parent has another child that they need to support, the Child Maintenance Service needs to see proof that Child Benefit is being paid for that child before they can change your payments. The date of the change will be taken from the date at which Child Benefit starts being paid. You can find more information on how the Child Maintenance Service works out child maintenance on Gov.uk at
www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-work...ut-child-maintenance. You may also wish to contact the Child Maintenance Service directly to discuss your query.
However, you have mentioned that you pay child maintenance via a family-based arrangement. With this type of agreement, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, both you and your ex-partner have the freedom to decide the terms of your own arrangement, such as how your child maintenance will be calculated. The main thing is that both you and your ex-partner are in agreement and your arrangement remains amicable.
A family-based arrangement can include money and other kinds of support, such as you directly paying for things that your children may need. Although family-based arrangements are not legally-binding, many parents prefer them because of their flexibility and how easy the arrangement can be reviewed, such as if you or your ex-partner’s circumstances change. You can find more information on family-based arrangement on our website at
www.cmoptions.org/en/family/index.asp.
We have a range of tools and guides on our website that you may find useful (
www.cmoptions.org/en/toolbox/index.asp). We have a discussion guide which you can use to help you plan your conversations around child maintenance. We also have a family-based arrangement form that is not a legally-binding document but if used to write down what both of you have agreed, it can help to formalise your arrangement.
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/. Some parents use the figure provided as a starting point to negotiate a family-based arrangement.
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.
Regards
William
