to wonder why the minimum amount of maintenance paid through CSA, £5 per week, has not increased?

[maristella]

Everything else has gone up: wages, benefits, rents, utilities, driving expenses, food.

Yet somehow my benefit scrounging claiming twat of an XP pays a lower proportion of his income than he did (or was supposed to) 10 years ago.

And there is said to be a cost of using CSA being introduced.

Is this not important enough for politicians?

It always makes me laugh in a sort of WTF way when I read about men giving up jobs just to avoid CSA. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face - whatever the expression is.

I also thought you didn't get JSA if you voluntarily made yourself unemployed. The benefits agency needs to tighten up on these pathetic men.

My best friends ex is a billionaire and she get £5.40 a week as he has put every penny in his wifes account. His other children go to Eton!

Tryharder XP's attitude has made it quite easy for me to effectively restrict his career, just because he doesn't want to pay me! What a loser!

perfectpins I really hope she takes his money and runs

There is a massive question of lifestyle vs declared income with CSA payments. You wouldn't away with claiming all sorts if you had a histiry of being a blinking billionaire, and were now married to the billionaire you had given your billions to would you?

Child maintenance just isn't taken seriously

£5 per week when someone is on a means tested benefit is a lot of money. True it's a pitiful amount but if your income is £70 per week you can't really afford more, can you? Increasing it risks getting people into debt and increasing homelessness amongst other dire consequences.
True it's only a nominal amount and may as well be scrapped altogether but there is a reason for it.

you are allowed a maximum of £2000 a week. Do any of you get that?

But my original point was that it is a smaller proportion of the same means tested benefit that was being paid when the minimum amount was first introduced. Benefits have increased in the last X amount of years, but maintenance hasn't.

That is a very good point. The CSA even when it works isn't very user friendly in my experience.

It should be 15%, how is 15% of unearned income that they have been given any different from 15% of earned income. I might actually feel a bit better about an abled bodied single person being able to claim money it I knew it was going towards child support.

maristella if it had gone up by say 50p would you not still have complained that it's a pitiful amount?
Also it's not true that child maintenance is not taken seriously: CSA debts are one of the few debts (along with student loans) that cannot be written off with bankruptcy or debt relief order. Also the CSA are FIERCE when they pursue child maintenance debts, and rightly so.

And if 15% of earned or unearned income was paid out it might act as a deterrent to CSA dodging claimers like my XP.

They are not fierce enough; if they were I would have my money! If they were fierce enough I would have stood a chance of having the right amount of money in the first place.

The CSA only pursued XP's debt because I phoned and phoned and phoned them. He owed me a couple of thousand in unpaid weekly £5's. They only act when pushed and pushed, and are not pro active at all. If this was a service that I was having to pay for, I would want better value for money.

Oh with respect they are NOT fierce at all.

How much of the 71 pounds a week JSA would be reasonable?

In my area a single person with no children can get no more than 55 pounds a week Housing Benefit, I cant find any 1 bedroom flats for less than 350 a month, approx 25 pounds a week short fall ( if i went into a share house my ex wont let my DC visit let alone stay )

I pay CSA 5 pounds a week, that leaves 40 pounds for food, gas, elec, clothes.

Believe me I dont eat well and can't remember the last time I ate some fruit or decent meat, ( I dont smoke or drink or have a social life) I'm desparate for some shoes but the charity shop never have size12 in.

I'm not entitled to any tax credits.

But I'm just a typical benefits scrounger living the high life while my DC starve because I wont pay more...........

And yes I'm doing all i can to find work

Without outting myself, my ex spent £70,000 on legal fees to fight paying £30,000 in child support.
And won.

Mosman, that infuriates me. My friend was in the front page of the Evening Standard as her billionaire ex pleaded poverty and she kneed him in his bits on the way out of court and got a £50 fine!!!
The judge said it would be unfair for him to sell his rifle collection!!!

If you're doing all you can to find work, and going without to support your relationship with your children, then of course you are not the typical benefits scrounger!

I just want the proportion to be the same as it was when first introduced, or to have risen in a similar way. Should the proportion really have decreased?

The economic situation is just as shit for resident parents too by the way, most of us are struggling.

totally agree maristella.

my ex reduced the child support by £50 in january, the same month the houseing benefit was cut by £50 even though i asked him to hold off a few months so i wasn't taking such a massive hit in teh one month. he said no. he and his partner wanted to buy a house and that was that he was cutting the money (dont get me started on teh fact that i have been raising his children for 7 years and sacrificed my career and any chance of buying a cardboard box never mind a 3 bed semi with a garden that of course my dcs have said they wish we had all while he globe trotted and saved all his salary as he is in teh navy). so i had to suck it up. then last week he told me that he has handed in his notice at his job and that from july next year he might be unemployed. now i have all my fingers crossed that he gets a job by then but i cant help thinking that he has no intention of looking for one. he waited until he had his house bought before handing in his notice as i imagine no sane mortgage lender would give a mortgage to an unemployed person so clearly he has worked outt some sort of plan WRT his finances that will leave him in a better position. i dread to think how i will cope on £5 a week between two dcs. i am currently looking for work to try and get myself in a better/more secure financial postion.

It is really hard being the only parent making sacrifices isn't it?

I have sacrificed a lot career wise too, and my earning capability has always been limited because I am my child's only parent.

I'm sure my XP will get himself another job at some point, but because the CSA are not pro active, my payments will only be looked at again if I find out he is working and inform the CSA. This is highly unlikely because XP has chosen to live far away from us, and will not let me have any details for him other than his email address. I have no way of finding out where he lives/works etc, but I believe that the CSA could access this information.

I agree with all this.

Another thing that annoys me is if the NRP moves in with a new partner who has children, they are counted as his children, so the money he pays for his DC goes down. Yet, even thought they are counting him as part of the family for that side of things, it is only his money that is taken into consideration, not his partners, or the 'household' money. So my ex, while on jobseekers, has the £5 a week split between kids, while his partner, who he shares finances with, is recieving wages, tax credits which include him in the equation, and maintainence for her DCs from her ex. How is this fair? Either count him as part of the family, or don't, not one rule for one and one for the other.

I don't know why CSA can't link up with the tax system, rather than the RP being expected to know where the ex is working. My ex has finally figured out that I tell CSA as soon as I find out where he is working, so he doesn't give me any info anymore. But CSA say they can't find out! He must be paying tax, his national insurance must be registered, why can't they find out from that?

There is more protection for the children within a 2 parent family, and for the NRP.

If the household income was taken into consideration when maintenance was being calculated, this would prevent NRP from actively avoiding paid employment. I'm absolutely not saying that all NRP's would even consider this, but my XP has told me several times over the years that this is what he does.

I completely agree it should be linked with the tax system, the fact that it isn't is in my opinion a reflection of how unimportant child maintenance is

I also think there should be significant penalties for very late or unpaid payments, and for failing to notify CSA of a change in circumstances.

These penalties could be divided between CSA and RP. RP is compensated for missing payments, and CSA either have their service paid for by those failing to do their bit

There is another issue though.

If you are the pwc, you will be receiving child benefit and potentially tax credits, plus the CM (even if only £5). Yet if an NRP is on JSA and looks after the children some of the time, he/she will receive absolutely nothing in the way of benefits towards looking after the children. So if the NRP were to pay more than £5 out of their meagre JSA, how would they actually afford to feed the child or anything else while in their care? State benefits don't recognise at all than an NRP also incurs expenses when they look after the children.

I believe that if the NRP has the child/children for more than 2 days per week the required maintenance payment is reduced.

The fact is though, that as a parent you have less disposable income, whether as NRP or RP. That fact doesn't change for RP's, why should it for NRP's? Surely both should be focussed on the needs of the child?