CHILDMINDING WITH YOUR HUSBAND/PARTNER

[bellacat]

Those of you who childminders with your husband/partner, can you tell me what made you choose to do this and how it has worked out for you? Are they independently registered or classed as your assistant? Also, how do you go about starting? We've come to a crossroads and need to make a huge decision about my husbands job. Needless to say I am rather nervous about it. So any advise would be so much appreciated. Thankyou. Xxx

[sarah707]

My partner started as self-employed, working with me as an assistant.

We quickly realised it would be better if he was a childminder in his own right - the 2 hour rule is restrictive and he was doing half the job anyway!

He did his course and is now a cm so we work together full time and hmrc told us we had to form a partnership. We submit our own accounts individually and then partnership accounts.

We love working together! We float through the day with one doing one thing and the other doing another thing - the children really enjoy it too...

I'm so pleased we made this decision - and we got married recently :D

[BallyH]

It may be worth trying to visualise working all day all week with your husband. Would he meet you half way with everything or would you be steering with him behind and you having to prompt/remind him every so often? Would he resent this or you end up resenting him if you feel he's not pulling his weight? You would have to sit down and talk, honestly, about how you will work together. Will he be happy to continually take instructions from you or best to divide parts of the job up? It could be very rewarding and you could end up with a prosperous business. Best of luck.

[funemnx]

We didn't plan it but it's worked well (so far ;)). He took voluntary redundancy a year last April after working for the same company all of his adult life. We decided he would have a year off to just relax (kind of - he took over some of the cleaning and cooking). He was already registered as my assistant just in case - I was using another assistant who was also our cleaner so we let her go and he took over. He's been filling in where necessary - school runs sometimes and occasional visits to the park - he's now looking for another job but no luck yet but in the meantime, the children have really taken to him and ask where he is if he's not home!

Meanwhile, we have a dilemma - do we take on more children and work together properly or do I stick to my numbers and hope he gets a job soon? It's been a very nice year and a quarter but this job has opened his eyes to what I have been up to the last 17 years lol!

All you can do, I think is dive in and give it a year if you can!