Stopping Maintenance Payments with 50/50 Lives With Order

[Anon3000]

Hello @Anon3000

As soon as I got my CAO (which wasn't 50/50 unfortunately) inked in March 2023, I offered a private child maintenance arrangement to my Ex (who doesn't work and is bank rolled by her mother), which Ex rejected - and so I opened a case myself with CMS and (so far) have found them to be very reasonable.

After I opened the case with them, they calculated that I should be paying LESS than the private arrangement I offered Ex, so this is what she now gets!

She obviously had a fit and demanded a Mandatory Reconsideration (which found in my favour) and then she appealed that decision too - so now we have a First Tier Tribunal to look forward to at some point in the future..

In the meantime, she's been trying to unwind our CAO saying our daughter has returned from weekends with "marks and bruises" and been "emotionally struggling" with overnights..

Ex even claimed she had been a victim of domestic violence and then duped my daughter's GP into believing I was dangerous - my daughter's GP then arranged for Social Services to interview our 4yr old.. thank goodness SS ultimately decided no further action was needed, but obviously these events have left me feeling extremely anxious as am just waiting for the next phone call / email out of the blue to say fresh allegations have been made and my daughter has been reinterviewed.

Strap yourself in for the long haul because when their money is threatened, they will stoop to any depth to try and get Contact revoked and the full payout reinstated..

That’s disgusting but not surprising. These vile individuals will stop at nothing. You’ve given me food for thought.

 

[bakedapple]

Thanks all. We’re going to look into the back payments further before deciding what to do. If it’s a possibility then we’ll probably decide to just leave things as they are and not rock the boat. There’s been a private agreement for 9 years and no idea how much of that has been underpaid or by how much. Does anyone know if historical CM banding figures are available? It would be useful to know how much the liability could be and we can make an informed decision.

If its been a private arrangement with no CMS case, I don't believe they can't come back and tell you to pay back payments if you've paid less than their calculator.
Back payments are only due if you're not paying what they've told you to pay.

 

[Ash]

That’s disgusting but not surprising. These vile individuals will stop at nothing. You’ve given me food for thought.

Try not to worry about that kind of thing Anon3000. You have a "lives with both parents" order and that protects you - your ex is not the "sole parent with care" now - that is often when these shenanigans happen - when they abuse the "parent with care card". If your ex tried anything like that, you'd be straight back to court for sole residency presumably. When it's already "lives with both parents" then sole residency isn't such a big step for the courts.

Having said that, I had a "lives with both parents" order and after a year or so of it being followed, my ex did everything she possibly good to try and get sole residency back again. Firstly she just behaved as if the was the resident parent, and told everyone, including my son, that he just "visited" me. Secondly she was disruptive and deliberately created issues to force me to reapply to court so she could claim various things and try and get sole residency back. In a way that backfired because she ended up with a strong judgement against her. On the other hand she was fuelled to keep trying because xxxxxx Cafcass kept making mistakes in the report and said child lives with Mother and spends time with Father! And they wouldn't amend it. This made my ex think Cafcass were rooting for her, rather than it just being a lazy mistake so she kept causing trouble.

But the order protects you - things can be nipped in the bud quickly with a polite, firm message about complying with the court order. So it's after the order you have to learn another set of skills - good messaging! To keep her toeing the line - but without coming across as hostile or patronising.

Part of that is being as brief as possible. If there is no question in an email it doesn't require a response. If you can give a simple yes or no then a response could simply be

"Agreed"

or

"Noted"

or

"Not agreed - I would prefer to keep to the court ordered arrangements".

 

[Anon3000]

Thanks Ash. My partner pointed out this morning that if she wants to play dirty tricks then she could do that any time, she’s so emotionally volatile. Everything I’ve found online say the cms only back date payments to the date the claim was opened, so that’s reassuring.

 

[Ash]

Your order seems fairly clearly defined except the fact there is no changeover time in the order (is that right). If that was a mistake, and it should be there, then you can ask for the order to be amended under the "slip rule" to state that is 3pm. 3pm seems an odd time actually because school days can change the time they end and then you end up with the situation where the child is in Mum's care between 3pm and 3.30pm for example and not in your care until 3.30pm - which can get complicated.

I opted for "the time school finishes". But if 3pm was agreed at court then the order should say 3pm Friday to whatever time on the Sunday or following monday morning. Or it could just say "from school for 7 days" or something. "From school" means that the child is with you from whenever school ends or the child has to leave school early for some reason.

 

[Anon3000]

It says the the parent who has child in morning takes him to school and the one who has him in evening collects him from school. So I think that’s covered.

What potentially isn’t covered is what happens in school holidays. All it says is that the agreement continues. We have informally agreed handover time of 3pm in holidays (we have a text from her mum agreeing this on her behalf, as she nominated her mum as intermediary) - but perhaps we should ask for this to go into the court order?

 

[Ash]

I don't think you could get that in the order under the slip rule, unless both parties agree that it should be in the order that changeover time during school holidays is at 3pm. Then the order would have to be sent back for amendment along with a letter from a solicitor from both sides saying it's agreed.

It might be better to just see how it goes and keep some flexibility over the changeover time in holidays - which can be needed anyway when people have holidays booked. Hopefully that will go ok and it will be "around 3pm". It sounds like it's covered, bar agreeing a changeover time during holidays and you might need to be flexible on that.