To think the CSA could've told me this sometime in the last 22 years?

[iaintdead]

I've just got in from my shift to find a brown envelope from the CSA . I was very surprised as last time I heard from them was sometime in the early 2000s , plus I thought they had changed to CMS ?
Anyway, they have basically had a review of historic child support agency cases, ( letter says " the government" is reviewing ) mine included , and it seem that " regretfully" collecting the unpaid child maintenance owed to me is not possible and they've permanently written it off.
Well, thanks ? Thanks for nothing I suppose .
I've never had any maintenance ever. AIBU to think they might have been able to let me know they would never be able to collect the debt ( I'm not sure how much it must amount to , DS and I are NC with his excuse of a father) and I should have been told years ago that they had little chance of ever getting anything for DS?
I hoped that eventually DS might have a little something but it seems the CSA/CMS has few teeth to get anything out of useless parents ?
Anyone else had a letter recently ?
( sorry, that was a long one!)

@Viques
If the person involved has died or otherwise disappeared without trace with no assets what else can they do other than write it off?

I'm not surprised. They don't do anything when you're phoning up weekly nagging them either, which I did on and off for years. They screwed up 3 times with me in terms of not collecting arrears of thousands of pounds that they'd allowed to build up, taking the ex to court - or not as he wriggled out of that a few times, never informing me of anything. There was one thing they failed to do in 2010 - give me a letter saying I could appeal a decision and based on that I went to the Independent Case Examiner with the help of my MP which took 18 months for the ICE to tell me what I already knew (i.e. it listed the failings of the CSA and CMS and each action they failed to do properly which I told them, it's not like they investigated) and I got the princely sums of £100 and £50 and sorry for our crap work letters of the CSA and CMS. It was supposed to go to a tribunal to see if the wrong decision in 2010 would make any difference in terms of the amount of maintenance I'd get but I gave up. 13 years I chased these agencies to get maintenance totally about £5 a week on average in the end. Governments are shit at getting money from feckless men that don't want to pay and we can't do anything about it. Makes me sick. If you see your MP be prepared for a long, draining journey.

I had the same although a few years ago now. Written off. I only ever got two weeks of maintenance in 13 years.
I am amazed there hasn't ever been a huge review into the csa as was. Iirc most women I knew back then got nothing (or didn't declare it) some of them got the same letter around the same time. Just clearing a load off the decks I reckon.

They wrote to me and asked if I wanted them to collect the £500 they worked out my ExH owed me. As far as I was concerned, he did not owe me anything, he had kept up to date with payments. Then DD had moved in with him and he had not asked for any money from me.

I told them to write it off.

My sisters money owed was also written off a couple of years ago. 14 years of chasing never got a penny.

I’m amazed they write it off so easily. A friend of mine only received the money she was owed when her ex died and it was taken from his estate.

user well if someone has died without assets then obviously that is an end to it, but disappeared people can reappear, inherit, win money,get work etc so dying should be the only reason for closing cases where maintenance is owed.

Same here, my ex paid a total of £243 in 16 years, they wrote to me closing the case with thousands owed. He went onto have a lot of other children and refused to contribute towards them too.