So what d'you think of the naming and shaming non-maintenance payers idea then?

[ChristmasCaroligula]

news story here

I'll start first shall I? I think it's a pile of crap. I want to know why we don't have halls of shame for income tax evaders, or council tax non-payers, or congestion charge defaulters. You know why? Because we bloody well make them pay, on the whole. We take non-payment of council tax so seriously that we send old age pensioners to prison if they don't pay it. And yet with maintenance we talk about collecting money as if it is impossible.

And another thing. Someone tell me how it would benefit my children if their father was publicly named as being a wastrel? How would that be in their interests? How would that make them feel? I can't imagine how awful it would be to be told in the playground "your dad doesn't love you enough to pay your money. And no you can't play with us!"

I can't believe that this government has so lost the plot that it can come out with an infantile idea like this and think it will disguise the fact that their agency is a disgrace. Rant, rant, rant, rant.

I'm avidly lurking on this discussion.. I can't post.. the sight of the letters CSA are enough to make my blood boil. I couldn't possibly be constructive.

My son is 14. I split from his dad when he was 2.
He has never paid anything. I was dealing with the CSA a few years back, i filled in a form.
I then recieved a few letters saying my case was being dealt with by different offices, and havent heard anything since, that was years ago!

I dont think that naming these people is a good idea at all, but something needs to be done about it, too many get away with this, and for too long!

You're right, my ex won't take me to court to see dd1, if he was going to he'd have done it by now - he's had 7yrs to save!!

i dont think he has any rights because he doesn't pay and she was born before dec 2003.

May be my position is worse. Our court order says as I earn more and as part of the clean break he doesn't support the children.

couldn't agree more caligula, it's a rubbish, headline grabbing idea that achieves precisely zero. Send in the bailiffs/court orders/compulsory deductions from salaries and get the job done

I don't see it happening. Human rights law and all that.
But it will be a typical government long on spin, short on the boring detailed stuff.
How will they ensure that the "Dave Smith of Luton" is the David Smith ? Look at the tragic record of the child support agency, or ID cards if you think they can get websites right.

Also, many cases are contentious so we will get innocent people being attacked. Note the the government made itself immune from being sued when it created the CSA.

Also, who precisely is going to read it ?

OK, I am going to make a few very concise points and NOT allow myself to get .

• The CSA itself is responsible for sooo much so-called non-payment.
• The assessment calculations are utterly ludicrous (I am talking about the old system, still in use, that you need a degree to understand).
• They are quite happy to leave the absent parent's new family on the breadline whilst taking money for the old family that doesn't need it.
• They are so slow that for someone on a variable income the assessment never ever reflects the income at the time so can be completely unaffordable.

Frosty - we have had the same thing: "we have decided that you will do x" - err, I don't think so!!

I could go on, but I won't. This thread may have come to a natural conclusion so perhaps no one will read this post. But I have at least relieved some of my pent-up anger at all the absent parent bashing that goes on. BTW I was going to post this under a pseudonym in case anyone recognised me, but the server is down so I'm posting it anyway.

As it happens I do have a degree in Maths, and teach computational finance to City types. Trust me, the system doesn't make sense even if you do. I also did economics, and only an arts gradaute would be so lacking in understanding as to believe it could ever work.

I have utter contempt for parents who abandon their kids, but in the real world, the one not inhabited by Thatcher's Chirtian advirsor who created the CSA shit, it could never have worked.
They knew this.
It was never supposed to work.
It was a moral statement by those who believed that Victorian Chrisitan values should be enforced.
Unlike the police, NHS or even MI5, the CSA is exempt from being sued, not just for incmopetence, but for any wrongdoing of any kind including racism.
They knew up front it wan't going to work.

Blair wasn't going to do anything about is because it might upset the Daily Mail. New Labour doesn't "do" things. It spins, it runs focus groups, and sets up laws it knows cannot be enforced, let alone do any good. The huge IT problems (I ran the Treasury's largest IT infrastructure project) were down to the fact that most of the Labour party see numbers as basically a sort of colour, and whose IT knowledge comes from using a Macintosh.

Domini - what are you going to do if your kids want to do arts degrees?

or Christians?

We're paying for DS1 &2 to have music lessons.
I'm a classical liberal, my opinion of the worth of someone's position does not alter my duty to do well by them.

As for being Christians, they are both very very smart, and exposed to a wide range of ideas. I suppose they might have some religious view, but I can't see it being that dumb.
A sad, but overwhelimnigly obvious fact about superstitious people is that nearly all of them have pretty much the same delusional framework as their parents. Very few religious people have the self respect to work out for themselves what it is they really think, but instead follow the herd.

If my sons believed exactly the same as me, then I will have failed as a parent. The idea is to do better.

Oooh err DominiConnor - I have an arts degree (but I did A level maths - does that count??) I think I meant to say PhD actually .

BTW, my parents read the Daily Mail and my dad is religious - they definitely have a tendency to follow the herd in matters moral!

As an aside, there is such a tendency to assume that virtually all absent parents have abandoned their kids. But in reality, so many don't have any choice but to step aside from their kids new lives in order to save their own sanity. It is all very well for people to say "oh, how can they abandon their own children". But how hard must it be for a father to see his children calling another man Dad and be completely excluded from their lives, with his financial input being the only kind that is welcomed? (And I am talking from experience BTW).

DC I don't know if I can quite believe they set it up intending it to fail. IIRC, it was supposed to ensure that single mothers didn't claim state benefits, but lived on maintenance instead. At the time, it was possible to live on maintenance (which is one of the reasons why very few men paid it, because they didn't earn enough to support one whole family, let alone two) and I do remember a friend of mine predicting that what the CSA would do to maintenance, was to bring it down to poverty levels. She was quite right, 25% maximum of an average man's income means maintenance is no longer a viable income. So it failed in its supposed purpose (getting single mothers off benefits and ensuring they weren't being supported by the state) but I'd like to know what political advantage there would be in setting up an agency specifically designed to be a balls-up.

I have to say as well that I think one reason why so many men gall at having to pay maintenance through the CSA is the ridiculous way the assessment is worded. A huge proportion of the money they say is needed is actually stated to be for the support of the mother, and only a small amount is stated to be for the child. When a man knows, for example, that the mother and her new partner earn more than he does (or even if they don't), that in itself could be enough to make him refuse to pay. And having seen for myself the utterly insulting nature of the CSA's letters I can't really blame anyone who wants nothing to do with them.

I'm with MOHara on this...the letters CSA make me want to throttle someone.
I received a letter from 'them' a couple of months stating 'As Mr X has not given us any information we are setting his default payments at £30 a month. We will write to you when payment commences'
Yep you guessed it, I'm still waiting for money.
H ha bleedin ha!!
The f*cker can go jump, I manage on my own without his help.