Terms & Conditions

[Andy Thurman]

Comments please! 🙂
Scenario:
Clmt receives child benefit for child – ex partner receives Tax Credits. Statement rec’d that child’s time split (almost) 50/50 between parents.

As the statement declares the clmt has child “Mon, Tues, Fri & every other weekend”, I’m comfortable with treating child as resident at her address/in her household.

The statement also confirms that no maintenance is paid by ex-hubby (“due to amicable arrangement & shared custody”) but he does give her 1/2 of tax credits received (bank stats confirm).

As such, this amount has been used as income on the claim. It was originally entered as WTX/CTX but this is incorrect – clmt receives an amount equivalent to 1/2 tax credits as a payment from ex.

So:
Should it be classed as a voluntary payment, maintenance (from her perspective the claimant “doesn’t get maintenance”) or misc income?

I’m of the opinion it is maintenance – does anyone think otherwise?? 😕

[Anonymous]

If the intention of the payment is to contribute to the upkeep and support of the child which appears to be the case I would treat the payment as maintenance.

[David]

Andy

I think this is one you could argue both ways & I would not disagree if you went along with Glayzell.

However, quoted fron Cambridge dictionary maintanance is money that a person must pay regularly by law in order to support their child or former marriage partner after a divorce (= official end to a marriage).

This appears to be a very informal arrangement & I presume ex would not pay anything if eg he became unemployed.

An argument for treating as a voluntary payment ensuring claimant gets more HB!

[Andy Thurman]

I quite like the voluntary payment idea (although I’m alone here on that one – misc is being championed – so much for maximising!! 8) ) but think I must stick with maintenance – Cambridge dictionary may say one thing, but HBR Sched 5 (47) talks of maintenance paid “whether under a court order or not”.
Para 14 of the same lists voluntary payments with a rider that it does not apply if being made by a former partner or a parent of one of the clmt’s kids – pity the rider doesn’t extend to payments made by very rich parents to their grown-up kids! :8:

Crikey, if I’d read the schedule more carefully 1st time around I wouldn’t have needed to post! 😳

Thanks Glayzell & David for your ideas. 🙂

By the way – can anyone point me to the legal definitions for charitable/voluntary payments (seem to recall disregard only applies if payments are for ‘general living expenses etc.’ but can’t find anything that backs this up).
😕

[Anonymous]

Andy, the reason why para 14 of Schedule 5 to the new Regs looks like it has something missing is that the old Regs were amended last October. It used to be the case that charitable and voluntary payments were only disregarded in full if used for non-essentials – the disregard was limited to £20 if the money was used for food, fuel, clothing, footwear, rent and council tax. So the payment was ignored if you used it for your Sky TV subscription, but any amount above £20 a week was counted as income if you used it to buy groceries. Where all your income is pooled into a single bank account, and all your living costs are paid out of that single account, it is not easy to say whether a voluntary payment was for essentials or extras. I think that was the reason for changing the Regs in October – too difficult to bother with trying to say what voluntary payments were used for. I suppose also that a lot of voluntary payments were less than £20 a week anyway – like if you pay your dad’s gas bill for him, £150 for the winter quarter, that’s less than £20 a week.

So what you see in the new Regs is the new disregard that applies to all voluntary payments.

But as others have pointed out, payments from your ex partner (or payments from the parent of your child who you never shacked up with as a partner) are and always have been excluded from the definition of voluntary payments, so what you are dealing with here is maintenance.

[Author]

Posts