CMS

Does anyone know what happens if CMS are ordering partner to pay SO MUCH in monthly maintenance payments that we simply wouldn’t be able to afford it, along with being able to pay our own bills (mortgage etc.)??? Partner is being told he must pay such an amount that we wouldn’t be able to live. We wouldn’t have enough to keep a roof over our own heads or pay our bills or pay for food if we actually paid out THAT much in maintenance every month, but CMS won’t hear any of it as it’s clearly only the money-grabbing BM they care about.

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Literally HATE the CMS, it's a total scam, they calculate it based on wages before tax which is absolutely ridiculous, the only way my partner got out of it was coming up with a sensible agreement between him and his daughters mum, turns out the CMS wasn't even paying her the maintenance so she kept reporting my partner but he had proof of CMS taking it out of his wages so it didn't benefit either of them, could your partner have a chat with BM or is she unwilling to chat about it?

@Beth No that’s a no-go. The reason we now go through CMS was because she decided to and grew jealous and nasty when we announced pregnancy with our daughter, even after YEARS of private arrangements.

They have to take account of your daughter and that reduces it slightly as he has more children to provide for.

@Ali they have done this and the payments are still way too far out of our living means

Not much you can do unfortunately. If that's the amount they've calculated based on his wage, children, how often he sees them etc then that's the amount he has to pay. Unfortunately if you don't/can't pay, it can be changed to collect and pay eventually and it will raise the amount even more.

@Alex really? So we would end up losing a roof over our heads for not only our own child, but also SK when they come to stay? All to fund BM so that she doesn’t even need to work?!

They don't really care, I don't think anyway. They have a calculation based on the above and that's what they follow. Only way to lower the amount (I think) would be if you took BM to court for more time/overnights, that way it would be lowered or 50/50 you shouldn't have to pay anything.

Have you had a private arrangement prior to this?

@Samantha yes, for years, until we announced pregnancy

I believe you can go to court and have it looked at through the court and then your outgoings are taken into consideration Also make sure they have the correct overnights you have the child and are taking an amount off for your child I think it’s hard for us to see as a SM because we see all this money going to the BM and if your partner is a high tax payer it can feel like an awful lot after you’ve paid tax etc :( could you maybe look at the outgoings for SC and come to an agreement privately to contribute to their costs?!

I would suggest going to court then, because I have had a friend that did this, and they then gave a different figure which they said was more appropriate to circumstance. They basically said she was being greedy, and should have stuck with the private arrangement.

Unfortunately it all goes off his wage yearly wage, him having another child doesn’t take the monthly payments down much which is silly, he can start paying more into his pension and that takes the payments down a bit more, unfortunately cms don’t care about anything else other than the women getting paid I hate it so much. X