New to child maintenance; question regarding irregular work

Louk

After trying for over three years to come to a private arrangement I made the call to cms today to make an application for direct pay to get maintenance for my son. My ex is a labourer and works via an agency and I think that he has a few occaisional weeks where he doesn't get any work. How will the CMS work out what he should be paying. How frequently do thy look at what he is earning?

He doesn't have him over night at all. This is his only child.

Guest101

Is he self employed?


Or is he employed by the agency?

Louk

Is he self employed?


Or is he employed by the agency?

Pretty sure he is employed by the agency.

Fission

The current system simply looks at the parent's HMRC total for the last full tax year (April - April) and uses that figure (gross income).

Weekly child support will be 12% of that gross income figure (divided by 52, obviously).

It'll be that much every week 52 weeks a year. He should be easily able to manage it in weeks when he's working and he should really lay some money aside for the lean weeks (just as he realistically has to do with all his expenses).