Charging parents to use the child support agency

[unta]

www.express.co.uk/posts/view/222210/-Fee-to-parents-who-split

Please read todays link in the daily express

In this economic climate whereby we are supposed to be tightening our belts we are now asked to pay for a service that is diabolical and unfit for purpose!

My children are owed in excess of £42,000 in uncollected maintenance you tell me if that's a service worth paying for when we below the breadline.

There are charging orders on my ex-husband?s house , a suspended sentence of 42 days and the court has ordered he pays £100 per month of the arrears, which he does pay, but meanwhile £434.94 per month current maintenance is owed each month and is not being paid. ?The agency has powers to enforce arrears but not current maintenance?, ?So month-by-month we are not receiving the £100.37 that the appeal (known as a lifestyle departure hearing) assessed him as liable and able to pay. And as for the arrears, if he goes on paying these at the current rate, my sons will be aged 67 and 69 by the time the debt is paid off?.

You would be better occupied by passing legislation that states that an absent parent is to pay maintenance which is sadly lacking has been for the past 20+ years!

My DH was pulled into the CSA at the very beginning. His children lost the money he had previously given direct to their mother, and instead he ended up effectively paying the income support for his ex and her husband as the Govt took everything. Understandably he is not a fan.

Same with my DH!

However he saw it as supporting his child (even though he had been doing that through a private arrangement previously) and whenever anyone banged on about single mums on benefits he would usually set them straight about CSA contributions.

Definitely not a fan since they took my salary & tax credit into the calculation though. I am so glad we are a year off not being involved with them anymore..

DH wasn't though. DH's kids ended up £30 a week worse off yet he was paying the CSA more than twice the amount he and his ex had agreed.

Not sure if that's because his ex wasn't declaring the money before though . Anyhow it's thankfully water under the bridge for us now. It was a total and utter nightmare for years and years, but all over now.

Yes I see where you are coming from there.

As my DH's ex was also on full housing benefit he added that into the mix too. Oh, she wasn't thrilled, believe me..wished she hadn't bothered as she thought she would get CSA + the income support.

I hated the 'carers element' included in the maintenance as that actually meant his ex was receiving more than the child. He was then ordered through court to pay spousal maintenance on top of all that, which menat her benefit was cut.

Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul..and shooting yourself in the foot!

meant

Oh yes, that carer's element. DH didn't earn enough to pay the full amount they said was needed for her and the kids so the maintenance was, in the words of the CSA themselves, just for her. She came first. Boy did that grate on us. The wording of the letters was terrible too. "We have decided that you will pay by so and so method". They'd "decide" he had to pay using Giro slips and then never send any, then chase him for arrears while he was still waiting for them to send them. Oh God it's all coming back now.

The more I think about it the angrier I get.

This CSA talk does my blood pressure no good at all! oh yes..''The Secretary Of State has decided''

Nice to know the Prime Minister is in control over how my husband pays towards his child, and how much. It's a pity they aren't so hot on contact issues :(

Yes the CSA was a terrible idea and nothing to do with collecting money for children. Brought in by the Tory government, it did more harm than good. Pure evil!

The fact that it was brought in by the Tory government is neither here nor there. The fact remains, there was another government in place for 13 years, with 2 PMs..who have done NOTHING to sort out the mess.

As I have said many times before I actually think it was a good idea to offset the benefit bill. Unfortunately loopholes allowed any PWC to go to the CSA even if they were working and not on benefits. Of course those PWCs shoudl receive maintenance for their children..but it should have rested with the courts.

The CSA have not, and will never, cope with private cases.

The CSA didn't want to know if PWC was working and the court system wasn't an option either. The next government did allow working parents in receipt of tax credits to keep their maintenance and then let people on IS keep it latterly.

I lost a job and signed onto IS (didn't receive HB as I own my house) for all of 3 months before I got back into work. They sent someone to my house from the CSA, the woman reminded me of Hitler!

They only let people on IS keep it in the much later stages if the clients were on the new system.

To date, there are still around 800,000 cases on the old rules. All maintenance appears to be going to the government in these cases.

The fact that they had two systems running together (and with the introduction of CMEC it became 3 systems) is actually discrimination and in breach of the law..but as you probably know, the CSA is above the law in most cases!

DH's ex, when she was off income support, could have withdrawn from the CSA. I think for a while you had to use them if on Family Credit, but then that changed. But she refused to pull out. She was well aware of the huge stress it was causing DH, whose income changed from month to month, week to week. The CSA could never ever keep track and we went to hell and back over demands for massive payments based on the income from a single week with overtime that then continued for months on end. I agree the system is completely unfit for private cases - and as we all know, they always, always come down hardest on the ones who want to pay.

3 systems running, some getting to keep it, some not, . Though why I am shocked I don't know, nothing surprises me with this regime. I wonder if they are letting people keep it coincides with the fact that lone parents are being taken off IS when their youngest reaches a certain age.

Like tuition fees and everything else the money you get changes depending which year/whereabouts you live, wonder if that's legal too.

And some fathers stuck on the old CS1 system are having to pay massive amounts more than they would on the new system. We were assessed for more than 50% of our actual income at one point. They used a couple of payslips with exceptional amounts of overtime and with the stupidly complicated assessment procedure it took over a year to get a new assessment. The new assessment was not backdated. We couldn't afford it, plain and simple, paid what we could - about what DH would have been assessed for on the new system - and got stung for the arrears.

Your story is familiar, gaelicsheep! My DHs ex could have come away from the CSA too, but obviously didn't really mind them only sending her payments once every 3 months..sometimes even more erratically :(

It does make me angry when people think arrears are there because the NRP hasn't paid. Not always true, as you know. Many have paid and had backdated arrears due to long winded assessments.

Good points made there, abouteve.

It's true that there are some people in arrears because they're on CSAv1 and the assessments were crap.

But I would suspect that there are many more people in arrears because they're on CSAv2 and they're exploiting loopholes or simply refusing to pay what they owe.

Mt Ex simply refuses to cooperate and in almost 5 years I have had about 600 quid in all - he has not declared whole jobs, gone self employed and is now signing on - I had my first 10 quid in time for xmas!!!!! the thing is even when he was on benefit a while ago, they took it from him but i never had it paid to me, this is the same for a friend of mine, her ex on benefits has had the money stopped from him for months and she has not had a payment at all!

It is a shitty system and even when I altered them to ex having a second job they asked me if i had a payslip to prove it!!!! ahhhhh, how fucking annoying. Anyway, he did have a second job with who I said but he just gave it up and they never backdated it - the claim started from when he replied, rather than when I altered them. They also took weeks and weeks to get his tax records (as he was paying tax) and I couldn't understand what took so long. Dreadful system and needs overhauling completely. Charging anyone except the persistent non paying absent parent is a massive slap in the face and adds insult to fucking injury.

Snorbs, I know quite a few NRPs on the old rules who have arrears..and yes, quite a few are self employed deadbeats who have no intention of paying.

MARIA MILLER THE JUNIOR MINISTER FOR THE DWP WANTS TO CHARGE AN INITIAL CONSULTATION £100 FEE FOR USING THE CSA, FOR THOSE ON BENEFITS THEY WILL BE CHARGED £50, THEY ARE STILL NEGOTIATING ON GOING FEE CHARGES!

Those who have been in a domestic violent relationship pay nothing.

Should you need access to tax details in order to calculate maintenance that is chargeable at £20

Oh FGS. Are they saying the only legitimate reason for splitting is domestic violence? I wonder what proof they'll require of that? One person's say so? I doubt it. A conviction? They have not thought this through - surprise, surprise.

unta that would imply that it is the person who has the children who pays the fee.

As the waiver for DV is presumably on the basis that the person who has been a victim of DV is the one who has the children and is seeking maintenance. Otherwise they are saying that comitting DV will be rewarded by waiving a fee.

So logically if that waiver is in place, it must the the person who has the children who is to pay.

This is all bollocks.

I am genuinely really taken aback by this.

This govt is all over the shop. They just keep doing things which are more and more baffling.

Oh gosh, that hadn't dawned on me. It is total garbage.

Illogical, like so much else they're coming out with.

Why not just liaise with HMRC and get it direct from people's income/tax return. Bonkers. They do that elsewhere in the world I think.