$126 a week for three children not much child support

The Herald reports:

A Ngaruawahia couple with a three-month-old baby face losing their house because the dad has been hit with an increase in payments of $44 a week.

Daniel Moulden, 30, and his wife Paige, 20, bought their house for $280,000 four months ago, just before their baby son Eli was born in January.

They calculated that they could just meet the house payments of $420 a week out of their combined net income of $1068 a week after deducting $82.50 a week which Mr Moulden was paying in child support for his three other aged 11, 9 and 4.

Then the child support formula changed. From April 1, Mr Moulden must now pay $126.30 a week.

“At the moment, we are pushing other bills away so that we can keep the house,” he said.

“But if you push a bill away, it just doubles the next week, so we are pretty much looking at we might have to give it up.”

have sympathy for any family who has an unexpected increase in costs. An extra $44 a week can be a real challenge.

But I would make the point that if he is only paying $82.50 a week or even $126.30 a week as a contribution towards three of his children, that is not a huge proportion of what they would be costing their custodial parent.

Mr Moulden is one of 33,000 liable parents whose child support payments have gone up under the new formula. A further 46,000 will pay less and 58,000 are unaffected.

Any change always produces winners and losers.

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