Hi TumzandEmz
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 UK statutory rules that are employed by the Child Maintenance Service, 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. Shared care is also taken into account in different ways depending on the paying parent’s child maintenance rate. Shared care applies if the paying parent provides overnight care for at least 52 nights per year before a liability will be reduced. This is based on the agreement with the receiving parent and or evidence.
However, if the paying parent can prove that they carry out an equal amount of day-to-day care as well as having equal shared care then the Child Maintenance Service regards neither parent to be the paying parent so their child maintenance would be set as nil, even if one parent receives the Child Benefit for the child that child maintenance is being paid for. You can also 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.
To find out if you are entitled to receive tax credits, you will need to contact HM Revenue and Customs. Their contact details can be found on Gov.uk (
www.gov.uk/contact-the-tax-credit-office). You can also find more information on tax credits at
www.gov.uk/browse/benefits/tax-credits.
With regards to setting up a child maintenance arrangement, there are a number of ways that you can do this.
One option that you may wish to consider is to try and set up a family-based arrangement with your husband. With this type of agreement, both you and your husband have the freedom to decide the terms of your own arrangement, such as if child maintenance will be paid with you having equal shared care of your children.
If both of you decide that child maintenance will be paid, a family-based arrangement can include money and other kinds of support, such as the paying parent directly paying for things that a child may need. Family-based arrangements are not legally-binding, however, many parents prefer them because of their flexibility and how easy they can be reviewed. They are also free to set up and maintain. You can find more information on family-based arrangements on our website at
www.cmoptions.org/en/family/index.asp.
We have a range of tools and guides on our website that may help you set up a family-based arrangement with your husband (
www.cmoptions.org/en/toolbox/index.asp). These include our discussion guide which you can use to help you plan your conversations around child maintenance. We also have family-based arrangement form which 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.
If you feel that a family-based arrangement will not work, you could make an application to the Child Maintenance Service. To do this as the receiving parent, you will need to be in receipt of the Child Benefit for your children.
The Child Maintenance Service use two schemes: Direct Pay and Collect and Pay. Both schemes are legally-binding and enforceable.
Direct Pay is where the Child Maintenance Service will provide both you and your husband with a child maintenance calculation and if child maintenance is to be paid, they will allow both of you to decide the payment method. After this, the Child Maintenance Service will make no further contact unless they are informed that payments have stopped or if there is a change in either of your circumstances.
Alternatively, under the Collect and Pay scheme, the Child Maintenance Service will calculate and collect payments from your husband and then forward them on to you. If you decide to use the Child Maintenance Service, your husband’s responsibility to pay will be around the point when he is contacted by the Child Maintenance Service.
The Government plans to introduce charges for using the Child Maintenance Service at some point in 2014. There will be three types of charges:
• Application fees
• Fees for collecting and paying out child maintenance
• Enforcement charges for paying parents who do not pay
The best way to avoid charges is to set up a family-based arrangement and not use the Child Maintenance Service at all. However, if you and your husband cannot agree an arrangement between yourselves, there will be no collection fees for parents who pay and receive child maintenance using Direct Pay, only application fees.
For parents using the Collect and Pay scheme, the government plans to charge collection fees to both the paying and receiving parent, this is for collecting and passing on child maintenance payments. Under the proposals, the paying parent would have to pay 20% in addition to the weekly maintenance payment and the receiving parent would have 4% taken away from the weekly maintenance payment.
If you decide to make an application to the Child Maintenance Service, you will need to contact us first either by telephone or email, for your unique reference number. This number is personal to you. It is unique and shows that you have spoken to Child Maintenance Options before applying for a statutory child maintenance arrangement.
If you feel that none of the above options will work for you, you could consider a
Consent Order, or a Minute of Agreement if you live in Scotland. Both of these options are official rulings made by a court. To arrange a Consent Order or a Minute of Agreement, both you and your husband will need to agree how much child maintenance will be paid and how often before going to court. This type of agreement is usually set up when both parents are going to court for other reasons, such as arranging a divorce or dividing assets. Arranging a Consent Order can be costly as fees for solicitors, mediators and court costs may apply.
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
