To be annoyed with HMRC re. Child Trust Fund

[Emprexia]

I didn't bother setting up the Child Trust Fund for DS because i didnt want it, and don't agree with trust funds.. savings accounts are much more useful.

DS is 16mo old and this morning i got a letter from RBS saying that HMRC has instructed them to set up a fund in DS's name, and that they'd be sending me the details.

Only it was address to my Maiden Name.. i've been married 3.5 years.. i called them to let them know of the error, and they said the only way they can change it is for me to either send them my marriage certificate, or go into an RBS branch and have them take a copy.

so... let me get this straight, you want me to send you my marriage certificate so you can change my INCORRECT details on a Child Trust Fund account i do not want and did not ask you to set up.

Yeah.. right.

meglet I'm not going to stick around and argue

but the 18-year-olds of my acquaintance have their heads screwed on far more securely than you assume in terms of money

Exactly meglet.. but my like or dislike of the CBT is neither here nor there.

Its the annoyance that if i want to change it from a stakeholder fund to savings.. which now we have it that i do want to do, that i have to go through the faff of taking my marriage cert to an RBS branch somewhere.. if i can find one, all because HMRC can't read the name on the Child Benefit records they've only ever had in my married name.

Meglet - in many ways I very much hope that my children get a chance to go and blow the lot on something frivolous at 18 (well mine won't because they were born before 2002).

Mine have two sets of bank accounts each - one which they save in themselves, from pocket money (paid direct to their bank account) and any money they get as gifts, which is fully within their control - they even have their own debit card (at 7 and 9yo ).

They also have a savings account each that they no nothing about and which will only be revealed to them when I think they are mature enough to handle it

CBT? gawd.. CTF, lmao.

You didn't want it at all and now you're being picky!

Are you suggesting that the £250 should be made avialable to him now? The point of waiting until 18 is:

Parents can't spend it
Promotes long term saving
Becomes available at a key point in child's life (education, car, accommodation, travel...)

YANBU to be annoyed at the mistake with the name but that's life.

But YABU to bemoan an investment for your son which will make a welcome addition to any savings you make for him.

Yes Tellus, because even though i didn't want it, now i have it, i'd be daft to ignore it and not at least make sure all the details pertaining to it are correct so DS can access the money in 17yrs time.

Well, yes. You should correct the details. I was referring to the changing the type of account.

There are 2 issues

YANBU to be annoyed that HMRC messed up with the name. That is slackness on their part.

YABU to be annoyed that they set up the Trust Fund for you.

kaishay I realise its a pain having to deal with it, I'd be bloomin' annoyed too. But it is 'free' money for your DS. I presume you don't have to rush to get the name changed? Although it's still a major inconvenience to have to do it.

Sorry but you are being an ignorant git.

No no, clarins girl. My objection to it is purely that they only give you 3 choices of where and how to invest it.

I'd rather be given a voucher that i could put in the account DH and I opened for him.. i have an inherant distrust of anything financially related to the government.

If I remember correctly when we were setting up ds's child trust fund we were give a choice about the type of investment we wanted the trust to be - if we opened it ourselves from a lower interest stakeholder fund to a higher risk investment fund. We chose the latter because we decided that we could open a regular savings account for ds, so we might as well take a risk over a long term investment that we got for free and he could make a fair bit more that £1000 by the time he is 18. If not, it is not our own money we are risking. I think that the OP clearly does not understand the whole scheme and HMRC are useless, but that is why it would have been more sensible to take the money and do something with it YOURSELF rather than leaving it for government that you are so critical of to deal with.

YABU

for the reasons Soapbox and cappucino stated

you get something like a year to decide where to invest your voucher, so tough luck. also, you can pay into it for the next 18 years, and make it into a savings account, so when your DS is 18, he gets a decent amount, even if you didn't do anything the £250 will earn interest .

if you don;t agree with it, take £250 of your own money and either give it back to HMRC or someone you think really deserves it

But doing it your way would mean that lots of children would never see the benefit of the money as their parents would spend it. CTF means that at least there is a guarantee that the child will receive the money when they reach 18.

But a CTF is better than a savings account in the long term.......it pays better interest (or at least the one I set up does)

As soapbox says "There is an additional payment into the fund of £250 or £500 depending on income levels, at age 7, which combined with the interest accrued on the account will give an average of £1000 at age 18, assuming no other payments are made into the fund"

The first statement I had from the CTF people I set up for my dd basically says that if I carry on investing the same amount that I am putting in now every month she will get around £20K at age 18. Considering that I will only be physically paying in around £11K and the Government £750, I think that's bloody good...no savings account will give you that return.

The maiden name thing is annoying, yes - but seriously, how hard is it to post off a copy of your marriage cert??

Kaishay obviously didn't bother researching, or reading the info that came.
As Cappuccion says, it clearly said that one would be set up for you( your child) , if, after a certain time period, you had not set one up yourself.
Ask any 18 yr old on the birthday, would you like £250 ? They would all say yes.
And the fact that one is set up by the HMRC, is to protect the child, and the childs money, from the very sort of perosn that is Kaishay !!!!!

what a strange thing to complain about.
yabu
think yourself lucky that your ds will get £250 a lot of people most likely missed out by a couple of months. or will have one child that gets it and another that doesn't.
tbh i think it was a daft idea. why didn't they just give a £10 to all children to open an account rather than a set start year.

3 choices of where to invest it ?
What do you mean ?

i'm not posting my documents anywhere.. last time i did that.. being for my passport, they lost them, and i had to pay for official copies.

My annoyance has nothing to do with one being opened FOR Ds by HMRC.. its the error re. my name.

An error that should not have occured and now i have to go through the inconvenience of a 20mile drive to the nearest RBS branch to fix.

Good Grief..

I'm not asking AIBU to be annoyed they opened a trust fund. i couldn't care either way what people think of my opinion on that.

I'm ASKING AIBU for being annoyed they got my name wrong and are telling me i have to give them my marriage cert to fix THEIR error.

yes, YABU

how else can they resolve it?

it is a mistake, it needs fixing, it has to be fixed this way as it is an important document

lulumama.

When a parent doesn't open a CTF and they do it for you, they get the parent responsibles details from the Child Benefit information.

The Child Benefit i recieve was registered in my married name and gets sent into a bank account thats in my married name.

I am wondering how on earth they even GOT my maiden name or made such an error when instructing RBS to open the CTF for DS.

Anyway, like it or not a person is legally recognised as an adult at 18 in the UK. That is why it is in trust til the child is 18, not 30.

There are three types of accounts, yes, including one which is a straight savings account. However, for each type of account there are dozens of institutions offering that type of account. How can that be a restriction?

I think you should have done your homework before assuming that it was too restrictive.

Annoying that your name isn't correct but easily solved and no hurry so why get upset about it?