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Roasted on fb should know better

Lifer33's picture

A disgruntled lady on fb is looking for support as to why her ex won't pay for ss residential week away, which lands on his time. Eyeroll. First of all she booked it on his time without consulting him. 2nd of all, the system in England is totally unfair anyway. I don't know about other countries.

In England there is no means test on the mother whatsoever, its like an archaic presumption that bm will be unable to provide ANYTHING for her child without the birth fathers input. Therefore as soon as you split, if birth fathers in anyway employed, birth mother can go straight to cms for a proportion of his wage. Now, I'm not knocking that as such. Some bm do need this to support their kids. It's just the complete inflexibility and lack of  taking into account both sets of circumstances that drives me mad! In our circumstance bm is very well off, but took hubby to cms for the max, despite him struggling to get reestablished and buy another house big enough to have a room for his child nearly 50/50. On top of that every residential parent in England gets 20 pounds in child benefit, every week. So, purely for that childs clothes and extra curricular you're getting 70 a week? Damn, I'd be dressing bd designer to burn it off. If there's any degree of staying over night they knock a futile 7 pounds a night off, but they fail to account that Both parents are fueling and heating a home big enough for purpose! So yea, just pay for the child's extra curricular you signed them up for. 

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yougotthis's picture

So he has his kid 50/50? How does child support calculation work for that out there?

In Canada 50/50 would be called Set off Child Support. So you take both incomes and calculate what child support they'd each pay, then you deduct the lower amount off the higher amount, and that's the amount the payer (whoever makes more money) pays to the other. 

Our Child Benefits are based on income. And when it's 50/50 each parent gets 50% of what they would have got if they had full custody. My DH ex makes pretty much nothing cause she's a bum who can't hold down a job lol so she gets the max amount which is around $1100 a month, this is for 3 kids tho (would have been $2200 if my DH hadn't finally applied) I think that's about 630 pounds unless the online calculator I found it wrong. Is it 20 pounds a week or 70 a week they're getting? You mentioned both amounts. 

We're also supposed to share extra curricular's based on income, but when we sign the kids up for something, we just pay for it. 

Lifer33's picture

If its 50 /50 the decent thing to do is a family based arrangement. But then the 'residential parent' who claims the government 20 pounds child benefit can still go through cms.

Cms then order dad to pay 12% of his earnings gross, before tax. They then have a tiered system of the amount of nights the child spends at dad's, and deduct 7 pounds a night. So in our case bm would receive 70 a week plus 20 if dad never had him. But as he does its 50 odd plus 20 per week. This doesn't take into account bm earnings or circumstances at all. It doesn't take into account both households are providing a room food and utilities. So therefore that money is really for clothes, sports etc. My daughter doesn't cost 70 a week in those things or she'd be a right pampered princess 

tog redux's picture

200 pounds a month in CS translates to 277 US dollars, which is REALLY, really low.  And if your system is assuming that the woman doesn't make much money (archaic, I agree), then it's assuming some of that is going to rent, food, and utilities, not just clothes and extras.

Here, with 50/50, the higher earner pays FULL support, regardless of overnights. BM was the higher earner so she fought hard to make sure SS wanted to be with her more. My DH ended up paying $1100 a month for CS and health insurance for his son, up to 21.

Doesn't sound like you guys have it too bad. 

tog redux's picture

 I know that salaries are lower in the UK, no links needed - however, if my DH was only ordered to pay $277 a month, he'd be making a similar salary.

I guess I don't really understand why people get upset if their partner has to pay even a small amount of child support.  And not until age 21, most likely. I was pointing out that the system is even more unfair here. 17% regardless of overnights and up to 21.