child maintenance - how much?

spaceboy

My daughters are staying with me 2-3 nights a week, how do I calculate how much child maintenance i should be paying my ex?

mum2one

have u tried the csa/csm calculator - give you a amount then x

spaceboy

Is that generally what people do?

Kim_13

Some will pay more than that amount - that is the legal minimum and vindictive ex's (if they are that way inclined) know that they can get more by restricting contact. So some NRP's prefer to pay more anyway rather than risk their contact with the child. The CMS can enforce maintenance even if the PWC is preventing all contact.

Are you buying clothes, paying towards school trips etc? If you can arrange maintenance privately then you would expect to pay less because of this than you would otherwise, but such contributions will not be taken into account if your ex opens a CMS case.

In a private arrangement the actual cost of raising the child should come into play. CMS just go on percentages so some will not pay enough to cover their share, while others will be paying more than is realistically needed for the child.