Written evidence from Name Withheld (CHM0092)
The following is my personal experience of the CSA/CMS and its regulations as a father with a legal, court ordered shared-residency of my son.
I approximately have care of my only son, who is 4 years old, just under 40% of the nights per year.
From my understanding the CSA and CMS reduce the amount of maintenance payable based upon the number of nights per year the NRP has care:
52 – 103
104 – 155
156 – 174
175 nights +
Each stage receiving a reduction of 1/7th extra.
From my experience this has caused difficulties between my ex-partner and I. My ex-partner has wanted to limit the number of overnight stays my son has with me as there is a financial incentive for her to do so. Even with a court order, she has chosen to interpret the provisions of the order as to restrict my son’s overnight stays with me. My Court Order is not written to satisfactorily give a categorical number of nights that he spends with me, and instead is written with provisions such as ‘every other weekend’, ‘half the school holiday’s’ ‘every other birthday’ etc. This is open to interpretation, and the CSA has twice altered their interpretation of the same Order as to the number of nights my son spends with me. The first time I sent the Court Order they interpreted it to mean 161 nights per year of shared care. After my ex-partner challenged this, it was re-interpreted to be 146. A reduction which has meant a significant extra payment in maintenance for a reduction of only 15 nights per year and an interpretation I believe under calculates the amount of nights he spends with me.
I would suspect it is very difficult for the CSA and CMS to be able to decide with any certainty exactly the amount of nights spent with the NRP.
However, I believe it is unacceptable for the burden of proof to be on the NRP. Although as far as I can find it is not explicitly written in documents, from my experience it has been me that has needed to obtain a court order, send calendars and diaries and other documents to the CSA to prove my son spends overnights with me whereas his mother has only needed to provide verbal evidence.
For example, if both parents were only able to provide verbal evidence, or evidence short of a court order that is contradictory to each other, I believe that the benefit of doubt goes to the Parent with Care. This completely undervalues and undermines the NRP, and has left me feeling that I am a liar until I can prove otherwise.
A child spending significant amounts of time in two homes requires that both can provide satisfactory accommodation. However, the CSA/CMS do not take any costs that a NRP may have in providing a second bedroom, second set of furniture, second set of clothes, child-care costs etc while the child is in their care. I have my son 40% of the time, but the cost of providing him a bedroom in my property in London has become financially unbearable and I have had to rent out his room and provide a bed in my bedroom. I receive a 2/7th reduction as the CSA have newly calculated I have my son 146 nights per year but this is nowhere near enough to truly reflect the extra cost of providing two equally loving homes for the child. This is further exacerbated by the fact the NRP is not entitled to any benefits, child benefit, child tax credit, housing benefits which take into account their responsibility for their children. Furthermore, even if there is 49/51% shared care the NRP would still have to pay maintenance to the PWC on top of the PWC being entitled to benefits. Neither does the maintenance payable take any account of relative incomes between the parents. Even if the PWC earns significantly more than the NRP, maintenance would still be payable.
In my opinion, I would be financially better off by downsizing to a one bedroom apartment and not providing my son with a bedroom. It cannot be right that I and many other fathers are left to feel that the state will not support them financially if they do the right thing by taking responsibility for the care of their children.
From my experience the CSA/CMS system is set up with inherent stereotyped roles of ‘mother cares, father provides’. Whereas the vast majority of PWC are mothers, the vast majority of fathers are the NRP. However, this does not adequately reflect both the growing desire of fathers to continue to care for their children after break-up or that many mothers wish to continue their careers.
Since having our child, my ex-partner has returned to work part-time working the minimum required hours for tax credits to become available. Her income is topped up by benefits, the maintenance I pay to her, and free childcare available to her only.
However, the same support is not available to me if I wished to also work part-time to care for our son. Only one parent can have the support of the state and Child Maintenance Service and that is the parent who claims the child benefit, this being overwhelmingly the mother.
Of-course by working full-time I have a higher relative income than my ex-partner. However, my ex-partner has chosen, possibly due to her calculating that she is financially better off with benefits and maintenance, to work part-time. If I had this as a viable option, I would have also chosen to work part-time while my son was below school age to care for him.
It strikes me that if other parents are in this position in that mothers are financially better off working part-time and fathers cannot work part-time even if they wished to care for their children, that this must contribute to the gender pay gap and gender inequality in general.
Conclusion
It is my belief that the both the CSA and CMS were set-up with the purpose of making irresponsible father’s pay for the upkeep of their children. This is a noble aim and one which I believe the vast-majority of parents will agree with. However, the vast majority of fathers deeply want what is best for their children and they want to not only provide financially, but also provide for them physically and emotionally. It cannot be right that a system designed to hold the minority of irresponsible fathers to account is causing great practical and emotional damage to decent, responsible and caring fathers. It is a system that is rigid and doesn’t allow for flexibility, requires only one parent to provide evidence of caring for their children and leaves the NRP believing they are only required to provide money. I believe that the CSA/CMS system and the benefits system needs urgent and radical reform to reflect modern families and their arrangements, to reduce the inherent gender inequality and stereotyped roles of mothers and fathers and to provide both parents the opportunity to practically both care and provide equally for their children.