Not entirely sure if I’m being unreasonable here, but my husband isn’t entertaining my rants.
I’ve been using the Child Maintenance Service for approximately 2yrs to collect maintenance payments from my ex husband and father of my eldest child. Payments have been made regularly with a detachment of earnings order in place and bar the funds being released late on a few occasions from CMS, I haven’t had any issues.
I use collect and pay, which means that myself and ex husband both pay a fee (a percentage) for this service, but my ex husband can’t be trusted to make payments, I’ve tried.
I didn’t receive any payment in September, so logged on to the portal to see that the payment had been missed. I waited the 10 days as advised by CMS until I queried the missed payment and was told there was an issue with ex husbands employer and they would reissue the detachment of earnings order. I asked how long this would take to process and was placed on hold whilst the call handler enquired. He then returned and said he had made a mistake and the funds had indeed been recovered from the paying parent but they had been recovered by the finance team for charges that were applicable to ex husband. The call handler advised that sometimes there is a £50 admin charge on setting up the detachment of earnings, but the payment I was expecting and the payment that has been recovered by the finance team is £600.
There have been many back and forth phone calls with CMS over the last week and essentially what they are saying at this point is, the money is unrecoverable and has paid off charges from ex husbands account. £418 of this was the maintenance payment and the rest was arrears that are being paid to me - The arrears payment has been been taken off the total owed to me.
CMS have told me that their charges are the priority as it comes out of central government funding and is the tax payers money. Myself and ex husband have been paying over £100 in admin fees each month for this ‘service’.
Am I unreasonable to feel that I have been robbed by child maintenance? It wasn’t my debt and that money was for my daughter. So far they have £600 of her money and are holding a further £418 from this months payment as it hasn’t been released yet.