Why is there no provision for true 50/50

Auntyem

speedster wrote: »

one solution would be to apply for CB for one child.

then, her csa claim would be counted out by your claim.

they wont split benefit for one child, but they have in many occasions awarded 1 to each parent in these situations where there is a 50/50 scenario.

Yes indeed thats what happened to us. CSA claim not cancelled out but each parent has a claim against the other for 1 child

Found_true_love

Ready001 wrote: »

I have split from my ex who has the opinion that she is the main carer for our 2 children. Unfortunatley, due to my kind and sympathetic nature, I have allowed her to claim the child benefit - hence now the CB, CSA and tax credit all goes to her. Until recently she had not claimed CSA as I have the kids 3 nights one week, 4 nights the next - every week and often more than that. There are many background issues - she is an alcoholic and left home, went away to rehab and has returned and is now the "Angel" mother!!!!!

She has recently made an application for CSA and is not willing to be reasonable, I do the school run / arrange care out of school if ill, pay half school costs, clothe, feed, bath, etc, etc. In my opinion I do more than 50% of the actual care that has a financial cost.

On the basis that she is totally uncooperative, how should i move forward??

The main reason for her application is her incorrect assumption that following my fathers retirement from the family business, that I have a massive income and directorship, despite my clearly telling her this is not the case!!

Please advise

Hi ready

First question, is your 7 nights a fortnight regular and provable?

If it is then once the CSA have processed the application you will recieve a form to fill in where (if I am correct) you can tell them of your contact arrangements.

For every night (on avarage) that you have your children OVERNIGHT (days dont count) your CSA assessment will be reduced by 1/7th

I think that the logical conclusion to that is if you have then 7 nights a fortnight (on average) then in theory you need not pay any maintenance.

No matter what you pay through the CSA it is entirely your choice as to wether you provide her with more money for other things for the children.

BTW is the contact arranges by voluntary process or court ordered?

If not court ordered if you can get mother to sign a voluntary contact arrangement between you, in effect it would be a draft order (pm me if you want the format) that is the way forward. Once she signs it give her a copy keep yours safe. That is now your proof to the CSA of 7 nights a fortnight.

Are there solicitors involved yet?

If not I predict the following will happen

1 mother goes to the CSA gets £0000 because of the 7 night a fortnight rule

2 mother seeks soliciitor advice, advice given by solicitor (which gives mother the confidence she needs to block contact) is that she should block contact. If Im right your fight then really starts.

3 Because of mothers blocking you are forced to seek an application for a contact order. This should be done VERY quickly so as not to loose the status quo contact you currently enjoy.

If you apply quickly then your signed voluntary contact agreement (which mum will not have told the solicitor about) becomes a very important document for you in your application.

After that get a Mackenzie friend to help you through the court process (dont bother to go to solicitor unless you get legal aid) and as Speedster says;

"BE WHITER THAN WHITE"

Never put mum down (even in jest) never complain, never protest, just quietly keep asking mums solicitor about what you think is in the childrens best interest and putting child focused reasons behind your arguments.

As hurtful as it may be you must praise the mother for putting her alcholism behind her (a lovely way of saying she was (and if I understand alcoholism correctly) could be again an alcoholic) but in a positive way!

Praise the mother for wanting to look after the children again and you welcome her involvement in the childrens lives now that her troubles are under control (reminds the court that she gave up and that she could slide again but you are being positive about it)

If she does get the £5 per week minimum from CSA then you can still keep up with the other amounts and again you can score some good points about it.

Oh and she will not be interested in what you say or claim about your situation with re your father even if you prove it black and white.

She is now sliding into the part of the wimmin psychology bit which is the "££££grabber".

Next it will be the aptly Speedster named "contact blocker" if I am correct in my analysis. Then we have another "oh my ex behaved exactly like that" situation.

It all starts to go downhill quickly once mother gets "advice" from, first her friends, then one solicitor who doesn't tell her what she wants to hear then another one who does.

Forget about the CB part once gone it stays gone unless you get residence back (and then its a struggle because she is mum see DX2 post)

Depending on how hostile (and "good") her solicitor is, watch your back for
false accusations made by her.

Concentrate on keeping the contact you have, it may be appropriate to make an application for contact and shared residence just to be pre emptive, but there is a bit of letter writing to go through so that you dont appear to have gone to court too quickly.

Let me know other circumstances you think I should know about to give the correct pre-emptive (child focused) advice.:beer:

LizzieS_2

speedster wrote: »

one solution would be to apply for CB for one child.

then, her csa claim would be counted out by your claim.

QUOTE]

Only if they both earn identical amounts and both pay or both not pay.

speedster

LizzieS wrote: »

speedster wrote: »

one solution would be to apply for CB for one child.

then, her csa claim would be counted out by your claim.

QUOTE]

Only if they both earn identical amounts and both pay or both not pay.

aye. but the difference can be quite negligible and mostly in these cases the csa advise closing both cases as it's not worth messing about with.

it's also a hell of a lot fairer than paying the pwc when you have 50/50.

Kimitatsu

She is now sliding into the part of the wimmin psychology bit which is the "££££grabber".

Next it will be the aptly Speedster named "contact blocker" if I am correct in my analysis. Then we have another "oh my ex behaved exactly like that" situation.

It all starts to go downhill quickly once mother gets "advice" from, first her friends, then one solicitor who doesn't tell her what she wants to hear then another one who does.

Can I just point out that both sexes can have this attitude! It is not merely women that have this attitude.

Child maintenance is just for that the maintenance of the child. That money goes towards maintaining the property in which they live, heating, lighting, clothing, food, leisure, telephone/internet etc etc. The money does not go towards keeping the PWC and being honest for many posts that I read if any of you honestly believe that £40 a week is more than ample to keep a child in all of the above (even on a shared cost basis) then I think you need to look at the costs more closely.

Found True Love and Speedster, I appreciate that you have both had acrimonious divorces and issues with contact, and you do have some good advice to give, but please I would ask you to refrain from putting "all women" in the same boat. If I put all men in the same boat as my ex then you would all have been banned from this board by now

speedster

if i put all wimmin in the same boat, i wouldn't be happily remarried.

i'd have gone all lavender!! :j

i'm afraid there will always be conflict wherever the csa rears it's ugly head.

it's also easy and clear to spot the greedy and the genuine ones who lurk amongst us.

Found_true_love

Kimitatsu wrote: »

Can I just point out that both sexes can have this attitude! It is not merely women that have this attitude.

Child maintenance is just for that the maintenance of the child. That money goes towards maintaining the property in which they live, heating, lighting, clothing, food, leisure, telephone/internet etc etc. The money does not go towards keeping the PWC and being honest for many posts that I read if any of you honestly believe that £40 a week is more than ample to keep a child in all of the above (even on a shared cost basis) then I think you need to look at the costs more closely.

Found True Love and Speedster, I appreciate that you have both had acrimonious divorces and issues with contact, and you do have some good advice to give, but please I would ask you to refrain from putting "all women" in the same boat. If I put all men in the same boat as my ex then you would all have been banned from this board by now

Dear Kimi

Firstly I must appologise

I would not and never have put all women in the same bracket I am very carefull about that issue.

Let me explain.......

1st 80% of all couples sort out all this stuff and dont need the court. I am not talking about thses type of people (men or women)

2nd of the remaining 20% - 10% can deal with all this stuff with good intervention, mediation and guidance. I am not talking about these men or women

3rd of the remaining 10% - 9% are wimmin and 1% are men (dont have another alternative spelling for those men yet)

Of those Wimmin they range in hostility, resistence, intransience (call it what you will) from between (on a scale of) 1 to 10. (same with the 1% men)

where Wimmin (or man) scale 1 goes along with court order just about, gets CSA involved as much as they can, to Wimmin (or man) scale 10 being blocks all contact, accused NRP of sexuall harrasment of children harrasment of RP etc etc.

Now, as we know most Wimmin statistically would fall at the 5 scale and the others........

So I am not talking about the women and men that have happy and healthy relationships or those that have unfortunately gone through the torment and emotional horror of a "normal" relationship (with children) breakdown.

I am only talking about that 9% and 1% and deliberately label these as Wimmin so as not to confuse them with the normal and lovely women of this planet.

However when posting unless I continually put caveats on what or whom I am refering to I am at risk of being labelled as "woman" hater which I can assure you I am not.

I am now happily married to a lovely Woman whom I met just 6 weeks after splitting up from me ex, so it didnt take me long to "find my true love" If she posted here she would concur with me and my views.

So maybe I need a personal sticky (and Speedster maybe but he can talk for himself) saying my position.

So to wrap up, I put only the ££££grabber contact blocker Wimmin in this catagory.

I hope that helps put my perspective on the argument.

Oh and btw we are still in a melting pot of all the worst breakdowns of relationships here the good stories dont get told here they get sorted by reasonable people (like my wife and her ex) and dont end up in slanging matches and court appearances

Found_true_love

speedster wrote: »

if i put all wimmin in the same boat, i wouldn't be happily remarried.

i'd have gone all lavender!! :j

i'm afraid there will always be conflict wherever the csa rears it's ugly head.

it's also easy and clear to spot the greedy and the genuine ones who lurk amongst us.

Total agreement with speedster :beer:

Kimitatsu

Morning FTL and Speedster

Thank you for that, I think it does help everyone if we all know where we are coming from.

I do agree that there are certain people on this planet who fail to move on and use their children as pawns in the game of chess. My lovely husband is a NRP and we have been through the mill with all of it, CS1 contact orders etc etc and we pay a fortune for his children (not complaining as they have a roof over their heads and food in their tummy), my ex plays the system and pays £5 a week for both of my lovely boys despite running three businesses, so I do see it from all sides.

The CSA is a fundementally flawed system because it fails to protect those it is there to serve - the children of a couple who split up. I have to say at this point that it is not the fault of the staff on the ground many of whom are great and I have found them to be as frustrated as myself in the rules and regulations that they have to endure. Shared care is just one anomolie, whilst there SHOULD be a provision for shared care, the computer just cannot take that on board when making a calculation (we all know that the computer says no on sooooo many things!)

Realistically, it should be easy for there to be a shared care provision across all of the benefits where an assessment is done for each parent and then any excess or defecit is explained and it is up to the parents to either ignore that advice or for the money to be exchanged as needed. If there is a shared care provision it would indicate that both parties were on amicable enough terms to have that discussion :cool:

The issue arises because the benefits system as a whole has to allocate one parent as the main carer, hence CB, tax credits etc all follow one parent who is allocated as the PWC. This was originally designed when CB was introduced to ensure that mothers had an income to look after their children, but fathers now are also PWC the system has not moved with the times.The other potential issue that arises when you have shared care is that of schooling, all catchment areas depend on the address at which you are normally resident - with the uproar of cheating for places etc then that is another issue which needs to be addressed.

There will always be people who will use their children as pawns - there was a report yesterday in the Times that was saying that 30% of parents lose contact with their children after divorce, a truly shocking figure. Whilst not all of those will be related to maintenance (some NRP's do decide to walk away from their offspring) a fair proportion will be. It is only when the system is tightened up and the system made fair and transparent for all to see that the children will stop being at the end of it.

Auntyem

speedster wrote: »

LizzieS wrote: »

aye. but the difference can be quite negligible and mostly in these cases the csa advise closing both cases as it's not worth messing about with.

it's also a hell of a lot fairer than paying the pwc when you have 50/50.

Hi Speedster, just wondering if you have any further info on this as I would find it really useful at the mo?
The CSA actually encouraged us to open 2nd case but it doesnt balance out at all as the amounts are very different.
This is situation with 50/50 and split CB.