I'm currently paying £415 Child maintenance and £560 Mortgage as we own the house 50/50. Having to borrow money to keep going.
How would that look? Would I stil lpay both?
Thankyou.
How would that look? Would I stil lpay both?
Thankyou.
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It is the Mortgage OR Child Maintenance, not both
- Thread starter Unknown01
- Start date
You should be seeking a variation from CMS to reduce your payments to £0 as you are already paying half the mortgage.
Thankyou.
I was aiming on giving stbx notice that I will pay the CMS but that the mortgage, that is it. No more. Please see my post I put up today. It explains a bit more.
Update to this, unless they've not read the new guidance or we've misunderstood. Basically my payments went down £90 a week, this is on a £1955 per month mortgage being presented to them. Makes no sense!
So did you get a better result?
I haven't needed to get a result yet. However, there is a clear calculation the CMS must follow. It would be arbitrary to allow the CMS to decide how to treat each case on a whim, they have to follow the law. Regulation 72 is quite clear in requiring that the full expense is taken into account and the CMS are clearly wrong in your case.
I posted on the other (very similar) thread about CMS and mortgage payments.
@Unknown01 I'd be interested in your view;
(sorry to cross post, copied below)
Just to add my experience on this;
I've seen several people suggest that a mortgage payment would be taken £ for £ from what you pay in CMS - unfortunately it doesn't seem to work like that!
Instead they calculate what you are paying towards your mortgage (annually) and subtract it from your gross salary, so the adjustment is relatively small. For example (made up numbers, but you get the point);
Before; you earn £50k gross, pay £500 per month towards joint mortgage, and your CMS is £600.
This is then calculated as;
£50k - (500 *12) = £44k
So CMS becomes 88% (£44k/£50k) of what is was before, ie £528
At least that is my understanding.... after spending over an hour on the phone to CMS today trying to get them to explain. There doesn't seem to be any proper explanation published as to how they calculate a variation, all they could tell me was 'the *system* has calculated a new amount'.
Would really help if they laid the calculation out in the letter they send (despite 13 pages of waffle there is no proper explanation, but I guess if they did that there would be some level of scrutiny or accountability?!
@Unknown01 I'd be interested in your view;
(sorry to cross post, copied below)
Just to add my experience on this;
I've seen several people suggest that a mortgage payment would be taken £ for £ from what you pay in CMS - unfortunately it doesn't seem to work like that!
Instead they calculate what you are paying towards your mortgage (annually) and subtract it from your gross salary, so the adjustment is relatively small. For example (made up numbers, but you get the point);
Before; you earn £50k gross, pay £500 per month towards joint mortgage, and your CMS is £600.
This is then calculated as;
£50k - (500 *12) = £44k
So CMS becomes 88% (£44k/£50k) of what is was before, ie £528
At least that is my understanding.... after spending over an hour on the phone to CMS today trying to get them to explain. There doesn't seem to be any proper explanation published as to how they calculate a variation, all they could tell me was 'the *system* has calculated a new amount'.
Would really help if they laid the calculation out in the letter they send (despite 13 pages of waffle there is no proper explanation, but I guess if they did that there would be some level of scrutiny or accountability?!
So I’m about to contact the CMS to challenge what I’m paying (mortgage and CMS) but from what I’m hearing it won’t remove one of the payments?
I pay £560 mortgage each month and £415 CMS. I can’t keep on paying both as need money to afford a place to stay. And that place must cater for when the children come to see me obviously too.
I pay £560 mortgage each month and £415 CMS. I can’t keep on paying both as need money to afford a place to stay. And that place must cater for when the children come to see me obviously too.
I can't find anything around regulation 72. Any links?
And yes, as Femto said that's what they seem to be using but is hardly a dent for most folks is it?
@bristol360 see;
www.legislation.gov.uk
agreed, there seem to be lots of us stuck in the situation where we're tied into eye watering outgoings whilst divorce finances get sorted; in my case CMS + Mortgage + rent is over 75% of my salary, and that's before any bills or other living expenses.
@Unknown01 You've posted some pretty clear statements about how this should work - indeed it was what you wrote which spurred me on to request a variation! Do you have any insight into why the reductions seem to be so minor?
The Child Support Maintenance Calculation Regulations 2012
These Regulations provide for a range of matters in relation to the calculation of child support maintenance under the Child Support Act 1991 (“the 1991 Act”). Together with the provisions of the 1991 Act as amended by the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 (c.6) and other relevant...
agreed, there seem to be lots of us stuck in the situation where we're tied into eye watering outgoings whilst divorce finances get sorted; in my case CMS + Mortgage + rent is over 75% of my salary, and that's before any bills or other living expenses.
@Unknown01 You've posted some pretty clear statements about how this should work - indeed it was what you wrote which spurred me on to request a variation! Do you have any insight into why the reductions seem to be so minor?
So it appears I missed the small print and as someone else has said, they deduct what you are paying on the mortgage from your gross pay which means you're only going to get a deduction of 12% or 20% of the mortgage payment from your CMS. Which is ridiculous as you pay the mortgage from net pay, not gross.
So I did some more digging and I discovered a zinger. The Family Law Act 1996 gives the court the power to order a non resident to pay the mortgage. People can also consent to pay the mortgage. However, there is a massive, gaping hole legally speaking.
Whilst a court can order you to pay the mortgage, your ex cannot enforce it if you don't. The reason is because the party you are being ordered to pay isn't your ex, its the bank. Spousal maintenance only works and can be enforced because it is a judgment debt. So if you don't pay it, only the bank can enforce it and they will only do so by foreclosure!
So my advice is just don't pay the mortgage. Your ex has a choice. Pay the mortgage, get repossessed or sell. They can get maintenance pending suit but realistically they normally don't and even if they do it impacts their universal credit. So you can still make sure they are as stretched as you during divorce and eager to resolve matters. Your credit rating will recover.
So I did some more digging and I discovered a zinger. The Family Law Act 1996 gives the court the power to order a non resident to pay the mortgage. People can also consent to pay the mortgage. However, there is a massive, gaping hole legally speaking.
Whilst a court can order you to pay the mortgage, your ex cannot enforce it if you don't. The reason is because the party you are being ordered to pay isn't your ex, its the bank. Spousal maintenance only works and can be enforced because it is a judgment debt. So if you don't pay it, only the bank can enforce it and they will only do so by foreclosure!
So my advice is just don't pay the mortgage. Your ex has a choice. Pay the mortgage, get repossessed or sell. They can get maintenance pending suit but realistically they normally don't and even if they do it impacts their universal credit. So you can still make sure they are as stretched as you during divorce and eager to resolve matters. Your credit rating will recover.
Although going by the court case that was highlighted it kind of infers it was a large amount. Although depending on circumstances someone may bother taking 12% to a tribunal and farting about if the payments were for a long enough period I suppose. It's an absolute joke that this is allowed to happen. I wonder how many father's have had their lives destroyed trying to keep up with these sort of demands and how many will have done things like taken their own lives, sad to think about it.
And I guess, yes, stop paying the mortgage and hopefully smoke her out to sell. Or threaten court, I've heard a couple of hundred spent on a letter before action is enough to show you mean business.
And I guess, yes, stop paying the mortgage and hopefully smoke her out to sell. Or threaten court, I've heard a couple of hundred spent on a letter before action is enough to show you mean business.
I recommend getting informed about what a court can and cannot enforce and where it can and cannot enforce it to determine what your options are.
If you are getting pulled into a situation where you are going to get slowly ruined (e.g. a Mesher Order or spousal maintenance) it is also worth weighing up whether it is better to be quickly ruined by bankruptcy, which stays on a credit file for six years, rather than slowly.
The kind of women who get spousal maintenance or Mesher Orders are not the sharpest tools in the box (if they were, they would become financially independent) so they tend to be a liability to stay tied to. Chances are if you get stuck in a Mesher Order with the kind of person stupid enough to need one then when the time comes to sell they'll probably stop paying the mortgage and mess you around anyway. Better to let that disaster happen before a Mesher Order than at the end of one.
If you are getting pulled into a situation where you are going to get slowly ruined (e.g. a Mesher Order or spousal maintenance) it is also worth weighing up whether it is better to be quickly ruined by bankruptcy, which stays on a credit file for six years, rather than slowly.
The kind of women who get spousal maintenance or Mesher Orders are not the sharpest tools in the box (if they were, they would become financially independent) so they tend to be a liability to stay tied to. Chances are if you get stuck in a Mesher Order with the kind of person stupid enough to need one then when the time comes to sell they'll probably stop paying the mortgage and mess you around anyway. Better to let that disaster happen before a Mesher Order than at the end of one.