CMS Variations

[BirminghamUK]

Hi, Can anyone advise please

i am a non resident dad, paying CMS monthly for my kid. We seperated 18 months ago and i only started seeing my daughter last week. I travel from Birmingham to London.

I want to put in a variation for contact costs

i was thinking of putting in my travel costs, contact centre costs £80 reg and £50 per hour (for room and supervisor) and costs for food and gifts i buy for my kid.

the contact centre plan changes monthly or every two months (i.e. hours of contact go up, which means my costs go up), does that mean ive got to fill out one of these forms whenever theres is a change?

does anyone know how the CMS process the variation application, do they expect me to send receipts, i mean they dont ask the resident parent to break down expenditure for the amount i pay month, what is the liklehood they say, produce receipts for petrol, train tickets etc. i mean what if in the foreseeable future i want to drive instead of taking the train?

Thanks in advance for any advice suggestions.

[warwickshire1]

I think CMS payment is based on your earnings and they wont take into account costs for supervised sessions and food and gifts you may buy your daughter unfortunately.

I am not sure if you can claim anything back for travel from Birmingham to London

[SteveyA]

(11-16-2019, 03:26 PM)BirminghamUK Wrote: Hi, Can anyone advise please

i am a non resident dad, paying CMS monthly for my kid. We seperated 18 months ago and i only started seeing my daughter last week. I travel from Birmingham to London.

I want to put in a variation for contact costs

i was thinking of putting in my travel costs, contact centre costs £80 reg and £50 per hour (for room and supervisor) and costs for food and gifts i buy for my kid.

the contact centre plan changes monthly or every two months (i.e. hours of contact go up, which means my costs go up), does that mean ive got to fill out one of these forms whenever theres is a change?

does anyone know how the CMS process the variation application, do they expect me to send receipts, i mean they dont ask the resident parent to break down expenditure for the amount i pay month, what is the liklehood they say, produce receipts for petrol, train tickets etc. i mean what if in the foreseeable future i want to drive instead of taking the train?

Thanks in advance for any advice suggestions.

Hi Birmingham UK


CMS will only work out the child maintenance on your gross salary before Tax & NI but after pension contributions. 

They will not factor in costs like you describe and will simply be a pecentage of your salary dependant on the number of nights you have them on average.  It will be deemed your choice to live away from your child.  

I will have the same from London to Salisbury and sadly it's up to us to travel / make it happen if we want to keep contact with our kids going forward. 

Best of luck

[BirminghamUK]

I've just had a response from CMS today. They say all the details of the claim will be declared with the mother as she is the main carer, the CMS will ask her for her comments regarding the application. Seriously? Of course she will say she disagrees. I didnt overstate anything anyway so let's see.

I feel like a second class citizen on parole asking for permission to breathe

[BirminghamUK]

Got another letter today saying after careful consideration there will be NO variation?????? What????

I pay circa 400 a month cms payment, I travel to london every two weeks and I pay supervised contact centre fees.. .and they say Its not worth variation? WTF??? The dude must have been high on something.. now I have to appeal the decision... took them ages to get back to me....

[BirminghamUK]

Called CMS up today, they advised me that the receiving parent said supervised contact has been cancelled and there have been no visits... ????

CMS want to see my petrol receipts and supervised contact receipts and reports.

Sounds like they accept whatever the receiving parent says in the first instance....???

[Goetia]

I no longer have to deal with CMS because I won 50/50 access, but before that was in place CMS was the bane of my life. The staff have so many cases that any situation which deviates from the norm causes them to melt down.

I found the system slow, incompetent, and if you are unlucky enough to speak with someone inexperienced then you can expect your case to be derailed and complicated further by wrong advice.

ONLY when I got my local MP’s support did I start to get focused assistance and them acknowledging the faults. The problem was, the situation I faced came around EVERY single year because it was anchored in a problem between HMRC and CMS, so I had to fight them every year, but they refused to look back to the previous year as evidence for why I was right and they were wrong, so I had to fight from June to October on average to prove the same point I had proven for the past 3 years, only for that challenge to mean I normally incurred financial losses.

I pity anyone who has to deal with them.