child support options

[WCFaithful]

First of all I realise the best place to get my answers is from the child support agency themselves and I do plan on contacting them when the need arises but for now I'm hoping there are a few people on here that may be able to give me an idea of where I stand as far as my payment options are concerned if there are any options at all?

I'm currently trying to get myself a mine job and things are progressing however I'm not there yet. Obviously when I do get there my wage will increase significantly from my current 50k a year to 100k+ and therefore my child support payments will increase. I have no problem with this whatsoever because my 4yr old daughter means the world to me and I will help her in any way I can to have a good comfortable life and a good education but I don't wish to do the same for her mother.

As it is now I pay her roughly $70 a week for child support and this seems fair based on our incomes. My daughter has everything she needs at this age and we all live comfortably albeit in separate houses. I share the custody and spend as much time with my daughter as possible.... she has her own bedroom at my place as well as her mums.

The problem I have is that her mum likes to party and enjoys the drug scene a bit too much for my liking, not to mention spends in excess of $150 a week on cigarettes plus drinks at the pub she frequents which isn't cheap so obviously her lifestyle is an expensive one compared to myself and I have a hard time handing over my hard earned money just so she can enjoy her nightlife.

Now if I decide to work extra hard and extra long hours so I can provide a good life for myself and my daughter is there a way of preventing my hard earned money from ending up in a drug dealers cash box? For eg is there an option for half of the payments to be put into some kind of trust fund so I know my daughter is the one benefitting from my hard work and not her mother? I know damn well her mum will be rubbing her hands together because she can afford to party even harder if I earn more money.

Is there anyone currently in this situation or similar that can offer me any advice?
Cheers

 

[bkozican]

I'm currently trying to get myself a mine job and things are progressing however I'm not there yet. Obviously when I do get there my wage will increase significantly from my current 50k a year to 100k+ and therefore my child support payments will increase. I have no problem with this whatsoever because my 4yr old daughter means the world to me and I will help her in any way I can to have a good comfortable life and a good education but I don't wish to do the same for her mother.

As it is now I pay her roughly $70 a week for child support and this seems fair based on our incomes. My daughter has everything she needs at this age and we all live comfortably albeit in separate houses. I share the custody and spend as much time with my daughter as possible.... she has her own bedroom at my place as well as her mums.

The problem I have is that her mum likes to party and enjoys the drug scene a bit too much for my liking, not to mention spends in excess of $150 a week on cigarettes plus drinks at the pub she frequents which isn't cheap so obviously her lifestyle is an expensive one compared to myself and I have a hard time handing over my hard earned money just so she can enjoy her nightlife.

Now if I decide to work extra hard and extra long hours so I can provide a good life for myself and my daughter is there a way of preventing my hard earned money from ending up in a drug dealers cash box? For eg is there an option for half of the payments to be put into some kind of trust fund so I know my daughter is the one benefitting from my hard work and not her mother? I know damn well her mum will be rubbing her hands together because she can afford to party even harder if I earn more money.

Is there anyone currently in this situation or similar that can offer me any advice?
Cheers

I would just like to say I have the up most respect for you Sir. Have you considered applying for full custody. You pay $70 a week at the moment but the mother enjoys the party lifestyle at roughly $150 a week. Not a family lawyer but Im sure they would like to know that. Anybody that I have ever known to have gone through this say " try and keep it out of the courts as long as you can." What I mean is try and get to a neutral financial agreement between both sides/parents

 

[little graham]

Is there anyone currently in this situation or similar that can offer me any advice?
Cheers

You don't have to hand cash over. Put them threw the most expensive school you can find, buy them top quality clothes ect ect.

The thing about this is, they (the kids) win. Thats what matters. turn the negative into a plus

 

[Northworth]

No experience first hand but from what I understand it is VERY hard.

Say you set up a trust of some sort in the child's name... and put $70/$100/whatever a week into it... then you can set terms and conditions on how it is used for the child's health, food, lodging, education etc.... It sounds like a solution...

But for every additional dollar of (contribution or) revenue into the trust from you... you can't guarantee that this will represent an equivalent marginal dollar of additional expenditure on the child... This is because the total cost of the child may be say $150 a week and you increasing support from $70 to $71 a week could result in your ex reducing her contribution from $80 to $79... Even if the cost of the child is only $75 and you are paying $70 of it... you increasing to $71 could see the other partner reducing their $5 to $4.

It is an inherently tricky business.... there is no pure way to ring fence her contribution and your contribution to the raising of the child


Sorry to be so negative. I sincerely hope this works out for you

 

[WCFaithful]

I would just like to say I have the up most respect for you Sir. Have you considered applying for full custody. You pay $70 a week at the moment but the mother enjoys the party lifestyle at roughly $150 a week. Not a family lawyer but Im sure they would like to know that. Anybody that I have ever known to have gone through this say " try and keep it out of the courts as long as you can." What I mean is try and get to a neutral financial agreement between both sides/parents

No I wouldn't drag my daughter through the courts, it wouldn't be fair on her and in any case she has a good loving relationship with us both and I couldn't take that away from her. I'm looking at working away fly in fly out too so full custody isn't an option anyway. As for the courts taking spending/expenses into consideration i doubt it would even come into play, I have a mortgage that eats up half of my weekly wage and that doesn't even come into the equation.

You don't have to hand cash over. Put them threw the most expensive school you can find, buy them top quality clothes ect ect.

The thing about this is, they (the kids) win. Thats what matters. turn the negative into a plus

I wasn't aware of that. That's certainly something I will bring up with the child support agency when the time comes.

No experience first hand but from what I understand it is VERY hard.

Say you set up a trust of some sort in the child's name... and put $70/$100/whatever a week into it... then you can set terms and conditions on how it is used for the child's health, food, lodging, education etc.... It sounds like a solution...

But for every additional dollar of (contribution or) revenue into the trust from you... you can't guarantee that this will represent an equivalent marginal dollar of additional expenditure on the child... This is because the total cost of the child may be say $150 a week and you increasing support from $70 to $71 a week could result in your ex reducing her contribution from $80 to $79... Even if the cost of the child is only $75 and you are paying $70 of it... you increasing to $71 could see the other partner reducing their $5 to $4.

It is an inherently tricky business.... there is no pure way to ring fence her contribution and your contribution to the raising of the child


Sorry to be so negative. I sincerely hope this works out for you

I understand what you're saying. I'm not too concerned about how much I pay, the child support agency tells me how much I have to pay and I pay it it just shits me that I can't make sure that a big percentage of my payments is being spent on my daughters needs and not going straight into her mums pocket to live it up. I do also understand that her mum is technically entitled to a percentage of my payments to support herself since she has been reduced to part time work as a result of having a child to care for part time, that's just the way it works and I accept that. I'll always be putting a little extra away for my daughters future regardless for when she needs a first car and things of that nature, that's just the way I am... I like to plan ahead.

The reason I want to be able to set up my payments differently and in such a way that I know the money is there for my kids needs is this little example... last year I wanted to send her to swimming lessons which was $100. I approached her mum about the idea and asked her to pay $50 toward it but she turned around and told me she would have to pay me back because she hasn't got $50 to put toward our child going to swimming lessons. Obviously I was a bit miffed considering since her birth (3 and a bit yrs) I had handed her mum close to $10,000 in child support and yet she couldn't find $50 To me this just doesn't add up. I would much prefer to have at least a percentage of my payments put into a separate account of some sort so it's there when it's needed especially if my payments go from $70 a week to $150 per week for eg. I'm just not sure if that's a legal option from the agencies perspective.