Separating and finances

DairyQueen

xylophone wrote: »

You might just have to "rent a room" and return to the family home at weekends to be with the children while your wife stays with a family member - you said she had family support.

Agree with xylophone. Except the prospect of your wife moving out of her home whilst you stay with the kids at weekends is optimistic. I had a close relative in a similar situation. He had to make a 320-mile round trip every Sunday to see his children. Those visits meant taking the children out for the day. Total cost (inc petrol) around £100 a trip. Needless to say, the visits had to be reduced to one every two weeks through reasons of affordability.

After he paid child maintenance, and the repayment on the marital debt, he didn't have enough to live on. Support from the state for a divorced, non-custodial parent is zilch. He worked full-time, and long hours, but without support from his family he would have been in desperate straits. The options were: a) rent a room in a shared house, or b) live with a family member. He was lucky that he had the latter option.

It took him seven years to move to his own place and only then because his (non-wealthy, retired) parents coughed-up the cost of a park home.

Sorry to sound so pessimistic but the system of social support prioritises welfare of children. That means the custodial parent receives support but a working, healthy, non-custodial parent can expect zero help from the housing and benefit system.

If you have family or friends who could offer you a home then that may be the best option. It will be a financial shock to discover just how much it costs to run two homes from a joint income that previously only needed to support one household. You will need time to adjust to the new financial status quo and to see how far your budget will stretch. It will also be very easy to suffer debt problems during the transition. Family are by far the best people to support you through such a difficult time.

Wish you the best of luck.

Sambella

If the welfare of children was REALLY paramount then the children would not be in poverty when with either parent. Quality time with an NRP should not mean poverty time with an NRP.

It’s almost as if the government do not want them to be in their children’s lives.

‘It appears that an inconsistency exists between the way that paying parents are treated within the statutory maintenance scheme (where there is an automatic responsibility to pay) and by the tax and benefits system (where there is no recognition of a financial parenting responsibility).232 This anomaly not only disregards the parenting commitment of the paying parent, but appears to increase the risk of children experiencing poverty when they are in their care and increases the likelihood of that commitment becoming unsustainable.‘‘

And -

https://www.cchpr.landecon.cam.ac.uk/Projects/Start-Year/2017/Non-resident-parents/nonres_parents_shared_housing/copy_of_DownloadTemplate/at_download/file

Awareness of this can only grow.