Statuary route,variation and general advice needed

Hi,

I''ve finally hit the child maintenance point after a few years.
As part of my divorce - I gave up the house and was allowed a 3 year break from child maintenance. This was all in the other persons favour as the house was worth a significant amount and she lied about living with her new partner (i.e she said she didnt)
In the end, I gave in so I could move on.
It didnt really happen - as my ex used the children against me and has broken up my relationship with one.. Both of the (inc the new partner) say they will do the same with my other child. Its been a nightmare.

My three year break is about to end and so I will start paying CM again from this month.

I travel each weekend to see my child and also have my child for one weekend a month.
Each week is a 440 mile round trip with that trip being done twice the weekend I have one child stay with me. Circa 2k miles a month.

I contacted my ex and stated I wanted to pay CM and wanted to agree amount and start date.
They asked for my payslips and I said I didnt want to hand them over but we could sit down, they could take down the numbers and we could agree an amount.
I asked if we could reduce the figure slightly so I could offset against my travel costs.

They now say that want to screw me for every penny (they have said this before) and want to go through child support.

It looks like I will be paying a significant amount. have looked at the variation options but even if accepted it doesn''t seem to make much of a difference to payments.

So,

If they applied tomorrow - when will I be obliged to pay the first payment (I ask this because our 3 years doesn''t end until end of this month but she wants payment from now)

Can CM backdate if it takes a while to set up (will I need to put money away now?)

I get a payment for a car (car allowance) - I take it this will be included in calculations.

If I ask for a variation for travel - will I need to prove the visits / frequency

Grateful for any other advice.

Thanks

A lot of information and tools (including strategies for dealing with conflict) to assist parents with child maintenance are available at the CM Options website. There is a chat line too.

Liability to pay child maintenance starts from the time the CMS contact the paying parent soon after an application is received. If you use DirectPay the CMS will calculate the amount and you can pay the amount yourself so you and your former wife don''t have to pay collection fees.

The initial assessment is a percentage of the paying parent''s taxable gross income, minus contributions to approved pension scheme. HMRC provides the information and anything of direct monetary value that derives from employment is treated as earnings. A deduction is made for the number of nights you share childcare.

Once the initial assessment has been carried out you can ask for a variation to take into account your expenses relating to contact. Before you could only claim a deduction for shared care *or* a variation for contact costs. Just in case you are reading the wrong rules that has changed and now you can have both!