please get some professional help / advice to know what your entitled to, as $20 a week does not seem right.

Seek professional advice. it sounds complicated and not at all like the financial side of things is being addressed

I would seek legal advice which can be given free from legal aid as well as speaking to child support agency and Centrelink, if your not happy with responses from the agencies you can always ring and speak to someone else there as we all know not everyone at Centrelink or child support want to be there so sometimes it pays to speak to a few different people.

You would really need to get advice from legal aid or a family law solicitor to know what’s fair for all concerned.

Sounds a bit complicated. It might pay to get a 3rd party to help make decisions that benefit the kids most of all, and are fair.

Also, ensuring all matters and arrangements are formalised gives consistency and routine which is important for everybody.

As you are trying to do the right thing by the kids, I think the best way is to make it fully official who is the primary carer for each of the kids full time. That way the most money will be divided on percentage of who looks after who and how much. It can be done if a friendly way so no one is ripped of in the end… I would get legal advise but state you want it done fairly and not for it to get nasty… Hope you can work something out. It great that the ex wants to do his share of looking after the kids..

You must seek professional advice on matters like this – to ensure both you, the father and the children all get positive outcomes. There are a lot of things that flow on from child arrangements – it sounds like you need proper advice that takes into account both your and the fathers circumstances.

There are lots of ways of getting free/low cost professional legal advice. Try a community legal centre in your area, or Legal Aid.

Your suggestions sound overly complicated and prone to problems.

This sounds like a very complex scenario with a number of factors that need to be considered. I would highly recommend getting some professional advice to ensure you come to an agreeable and equitable solution. I note that on the DHS website there is an outline of the various support services that are available to separated parents (https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/support-services-separated-families)

I would suggest having this formalised.

This is really complicated, and I’d be inclined to suggest getting some professional guidance.

The fact that he has one of the children every night, if he/ she is school age he is basically supporting her provided he is giving her meals. He would be entitled to Govt. allowance for her. How many meals is the Dad providing for the other children the 2 nights he has them. It also depends on his earnings. Obviously you are getting Govt support for 3 of them. If he was uemployed you might not even get that much per week. You need somebody in authority to calculate it for you.

Check out the child support calculator on the child support – government website. It lets you calculate roughly how much should be paid or received. It depends on care, ages and how much each person earns. I was told even a private arrangement needed to be lodged and if I was getting less than the scheduled amount it was still counted as the scheduled amount for tax and income. It is a messy process no matter which way you go.