WFTC/Tax Credits and child maintenance under new system

kst101

£230 a week sounds a lot. Does still surprise me that maintenance isn't taken into account for housing benefit and tax credit purposes (when did it change does anyone know?)

clearingout

kst101 wrote: »

£230 a week sounds a lot. Does still surprise me that maintenance isn't taken into account for housing benefit and tax credit purposes (when did it change does anyone know?)

April 2010.

I suspect that in by far the majority of cases, even with the disregard, children living in single parent households live around official poverty lines. I know mine do and still would if their father could be persuaded to pay maintenance!

clearingout

stroodes wrote: »

hmm I think £230 per week is way more than enough to feed 6 hungry kids, why is it always down on absent parent to keep the children why never take pwc income into it......just wondering from a happily married mother of 2 ( both have same dad )

I was a happily married mother of 3 (all of which have the same dad).

Rather than judging me as a single parent, perhaps you should judge my ex husband for having an affair and leaving his children and pregnant wife? maybe you should judge him, as a sole director of a limited company, for failing to pay child maintenance, failing to pay the mortgage on the family home and failing to make any emotional, practical or other contribution towards his children over the last year? maybe you also need to know that he quite happily pays his girlfriend a high salary whilst she works elsewhere, takes at least 3 -4 holidays a year and the pair of them drive around in brand new, high end, high spec cars paid for by our so-called 'family business'. That would be the 'family business' that won contracts on the basis of the quality tenders that I used to write (and which, if his lack of accounts are anything to go by, he is no longer winning).

Perhaps I should have immediately found a full-time job, whilst pregnant, in the middle of a recession and kept up with the £1k plus mortgage payments, the £200 a month joint debt (unfortunately in my name only), £200 a month in joint life assurances as well as all the other monthly bills, food, clothing etc. that had to be paid? Perhaps I should have handed my new born son to his father and his '3 children by 3 father's' girlfriend because they were obviously better placed to care for him and our older children than I was?

Not everyone is fortunate enough to live in a world that smells of roses on a permanent basis. S**t happens. When it happened to me, I rose to the challenge and I dealt with it. And for a while, that meant I was on benefits. That sure as hell doesn't give you the right to judge me, or other people in similar situations. And you sure as hell don't get to judge me on the basis that you think you are superior to all lone parents because you have 2 children by the same father. Sure as hell hope that s**t never happens to you 'cos you'd never cope!

Ziggazee

Excellent post clearingout!!

I wish some people would realise that many of us don't set out to become single parents, and for some of those single parents claiming benefits is the only option. I'm pretty darn sure if stroode's marriage broke down (for whatever reason) and she was faced with lack of maintenance from absent parent, then she would pretty quickly change her views.