CSA?

[bb99]

After 14 years of sole supporting my DC1 (with the help of current lovely DH), with about £2,000 worth of financial help from her birth father and relatively little contact, financially things are getting quite tight at home esp with other children in the family now...

I would like her birth father to help out financially so dc can still do things like guitar lessons, which may have to go, and go on school trips etc.

Having tried (unsuccessfully) for 3 months to contact him - he's 'working so hard to support his 4 children' he can't get to a phone (WTF - I and DH support one of these 4 children) to discuss anything.

How has anyone found the CSA (which TBH, I should have sorted out 14 years ago, but thought I would be more than reasonable and help him out, by not fleecing him, in the vain hope he would give a shit care enough to atleast spend time with lovely dc1 - foolish woman!)?

Apologies in advance if this is the wrong thread for posting, thought there would probably be some collective wisdom and XP on here!

Hi,

CSA can be very helpful - I think it depends on a number of factors, if the ex is in regular employed work and how responsive your ex is. From your post it seems you don't have contact but do you have an address? If so I suggest you write to him asking for financial assistance for your child. I think it would help to be specific -i.e you curently fund xyz which you can't now and would like assistance with. You can highlight how you have supported child for xx years however no longer able to do it. Mention that you would like to get to an agreement privately if possible and maybe give it a timeline for a response - say 2 weeks. If you don't a response then register a claim with the CSA which will be backdated from when you applied.If your ex is PAYE then the calculation is straightforward. If he is self employed then they rely on accounts or tax assessments which can take longer to deal process.

He's PAYE and (as far as I know) in regular employment.

I do have an address (somewhere) but he does use different names (sometimes) and I don't know which one he's working under IYSWIM.

I'd prefere a private arrangement as I'm not a complete bitch (yet ) but are these binding? Can they be enforced? We had an agreement for him to pay a MASSIVE £10 per month (one school dinner a week...) and he broke that after about 18 months...I think he counts on me being too busy to bother chasing him about this IYSWIM and I've always (until fairly recently - hence financial ishoos) worked FT to help support our family etc etc.

Thanks for advice so far - will continue to bang head on wall. I've told him to contact me by next Weds, or I am going to the CSA, being as he has relatively no contact, doesn't seem as though it will harm the sometimes once a year effort that he sometimes makes...

Give CSA all info you can, both names, etc.
You won't be worse off than you are now, even if they don't manage to get anything for you.
If he's PAYE it'll be easier for then to assess and get the money from him. But don't hold your breathe. You will have to chase the CSA a lot!