is £5 child maintenance too much?
I have a 4 year old daughter, I am not with the dad we broke up nearly 3 years ago, he now lives with his girlfriend and their 1 year old daughter. He has her from about 2 on a Wednesday has her over night and takes her play school on a Thursday and I pick her up, he also has her every other weekend from 4/5pm on a Friday until 4pm ish on a Sunday, he pays me £5 a week, he is happy with this as am I, but there's one problem.. his girlfriend, she seems to think he see's her too much and is paying to much for her seen as he has her 8 days a month. So I'm asking for opinions do you think 8 days a month and £5 a week is too much?
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This whole thing is kind of messed up, but first of all his girlfriend needs to keep her nosy butt out of the situation. It's none of her business.
The second thing that's messed up here is all of you are looking at it like a father has to "pay to see his child." Well if you pay for how much time you get, you are the one having her most of the time so why aren't you paying him? Makes no sense, huh? He is not "seeing" her, he is being her parent and caring for her when he has her. It's actually the case that the more custody a parent gets, the less they pay, and if there is 50/50 then no one pays the other anything.
The purpose of child maintenance is for when one parent has more custody and therefore more expense. The other parent contributes to the custodial parent to help with those expenses. If you want to figure out what's fair, first figure out how much each of you is spending on the child. If there's a difference, cut that difference in half and that is what is paid.
Instead of child maintenance, you could also do an alternative arrangement where each of you puts the same amount of money into an account each month and that money is used for whatever the child needs. You would have to sit down together and figure out how much is needed to support the child and put a little more than that in the account each month. IMO this is more fair but requires more planning and cooperation.
Also since you live in the UK and get "child benefit" you do have to take into account that you are getting that as custodial parent and he isn't.
No way is that too much!
When you think child benefit is £20 a week. Think of the things you have to buy her.
Does she still wear nappies at night? They are not cheap. Kids grow out of their clothes quickly.
I would say £10 is closer to what he should be paying.
5 Euro's is nowhere near enough.
If you were to add up how much your child costs you he should be expected to pay at least 1/4-1/3rd of the costs of basic needs.
It's nothing. My cousin pays £50 a week for his daughter.