I heard somewhere that we might see the disregard increased to £40 in April. Has this been confirmed please?

My client has shared residence of 4 kids. They spend more time with dad so he gets all benefits. She has them 2 days pw and dad generously gives her £20.

Contact will hopefully soon increase to 3 days pw. It's been suggested that dad then pays £60 pw. It'll cost her £27 in bus fares as it will then mean escorted school drops off and pick ups. Great - she's then left with £2.75 per day for each child

The court will only agree to extended contact if she's financially stable - ho flamin ho.

I can't see how she can be awarded any benefits for them because she's not the majority carer.

Additionally I assume only £20 of this 'maintenance' will be disregarded

All child maintenance payments will be disregarded as income for income support, income based jobseekers allowance and income related employment and support allowance from 12 April 2010. Should already be ignored for housing benefit and council tax benefit.

Thanks v much Paul. That answers one of my questions

I don't think this will help in my case as my client is the absent parent.

I assume maintenance will be disregarded if the payee is in receipt of CHB for the children ?

Ah yes, hadn't considered that your client won't benefit from the disregard. Unfortunately, that does appear to mean that the £20 disregard applies.

The whole issue of shared parenting and how to deal with the practicalities of issues such as financial agreements, benefits and family law decisions is something that Gingerbread is hoping to undertake some policy work on in the next 12 months as we're hearing about quite a few similar cases through our single parent helpline.

Something does need to be done about it as I've had quite a few clients in similar situations

Agree its a complete mess re shared residence and benefits/tax credits/housing. In your particular case the "PWC" could apply for maintenance from your client from what you say, indeed in most cases like this that is exactly what would happen.

Paul I would be interested to know more about the research Gingerbread is looking at this around these issues.

Still no decision yet in the Humphries case yet I guess.


Rich

Just think some more about workarounds- whats the relationship like re the co parents? Is there any merit in your client discussing options around the ability for co-parents to nominate claimants for CB/CTC? They may be able to make thier total income increase with some planned swapping of claims etc?

the relationship is 'bobbins' s they'd say round here ! I'd already suggested this but she says it'd be a no goer. Additionally as I mentioned the court will only agree to extended contact if she is financially stable and this is just the sort of thing the pwc would love

I'll keep that in mind Rich, when we start this piece of work - it's not likely to be for a few months yet as we have pre/post election policy work that will be happening first but it's definitely in our operational plan for this financial year.

I think we'd be looking to draw the framework of the debate as widely as possible, so it wouldn't only be about financial issues but shared care/shared parenting and family law. However, given the indisputable fact that finances do play such a central part of so many problems for both parents after separation, I would hope that there will be the opportunity for some worthwhile debate and discussion, as well as some useful recommendations and research.

Paul

That sounds very postive- the family law and benefits/tax credits/social welfare system appear so at odds with eachother - with the latter (and some would argue the former) promoting a 1 parent family culture when all the research suggests that in most cases children benefit form having 2 involved active parents

Paul can you direct me to info about this full disregard please. It's obviously of great interest to our Family dept

Have a look at this announcement from CMEC, which explains about recent changes to child maintenance and related issues.

It was originally announced in the Green Paper, No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility, by the way.

Many thanks Paul.

I'd seen this when I was searching for the info. I've also had an email from the local JCP to say DMs are still awaiting fell details and instructions and referred me to the same website !

The regs allowing for the full disregard were part of The Social Security (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 4) Regulations 2009 No. 2655

It was mentioned in Decision Makers Memo DMG 37/09, so DMs should be aware, although it does say a reminder will be issued nearer the time.

That's great Scott, thanks.