Has everyone submitted their questions to Maria Miller about what the --abolition-- reform of child maintenance?

[HerBeX]

You can do so here

...convinced that it is desirable to move towards 50-50 care as standard.

I think the CSA proposals are dangerous. It seems to be a means of punishing those who are unlucky enough to need their services, who tend to be the most vulnerable.

my husband and i applied to the csa to pay his maintance for 2 children in 2004. It was because the pwc, the mother is violent and aggressive towards, and infront of the children. We have always paid and always will. This proposal is ridiculous as why should we have to pay this when we have to use the csa, as a result of violence, the mum directed at the dad? We have 3 children together so all 5 will suffer financially.

If one of the parties earns 100% of the income, that is because the party who is discharging the obligations that party woulid otherwise have (domestic labour, childcare, parenting etc.) has enabled them to.

Do you think that parents who earn 100% of the income in a family should get to keep all of it Didyouever? That's what used to happen quite often and it's the reason Family Allowance (now Child Benefit) was introduced.

If one person has earnt 100% of the money enabling the other parent to stay at home they should not be punished for this at separation.

If one person has earnt 100% of the money enabling the other parent to stay at home they should not be punished for this at separation.

You're assuming that all SAHPs want to stay at home. In many cases this is not true. Many have no choice because childcare is so expensive.

Also, without the person staying at home, the wage-earner wouldn't be able to go out and earn 100% of the money unless they paid for professional childcare. Therefore, part of their earnings should be considered as belonging to the SAHP who carries out that role.

It's not a chicken and egg situation. Usually the SAHP was working before the arrival of children and gives up that role once the DC arrive.

Perhaps it would be fairer for both parents to switch to part-time and share childcare responsibilities, but what usually happens is that it is the man who then pursues his career while the woman stays at home to raise children (or works part-time and thus hinders her career advancement). This is also the reason why 92% of lone parents are women - if children are spending most of their time with their mother before separation, it is obvious that they are going to stay with the mother when the parents split.

So, on separation, the mother finds herself no further on in her career or job experience than she was before children, except now she's 5 or 7 (or whatever) years older with a yawning chasm on her CV. Meanwhile father's career has taken off because he has been able to exclusively concentrate on it while his partner has taken care of all the domestic stuff.

Regardless of who has done what in the past, the point is that no child alive has been born to anything other than TWO parents. Therefore TWO people should JOINTLY share responsibility for that child. In most cases, that will involve the NRP paying maintenance.

In an ideal world, more NRPs would fulfil that responsibility in terms of actual hands-on care, but that is only fair on the child (who is struggling to adjust to life post-separation anyway) if the NRP was doing so BEFORE the split.

Sorry I didn't realise it was a punishment to be asked to financially support your own flesh adn blood, Helpherecomes.

I thought it was just common decency.

Most non resident parents disagree with me however. 60% of them pay nothing.

Apparantly the government disagrees with me too as it's plannign to ensure that that state of affairs continues.

Male perspective.

It seems to me the man (usually) works and on separation is told, you're out of the house, you're going to lose most of it and by the way you can see the children every other weekend.

And you get to pay 15,20 or 25% of your salary.
No tax credits and child benefit.

If men realized that this was the case I'm not sure so many would goto work full time instead of splitting the work/childcare more equally.

I don't have an axe to grind as we do 50-50.

Truck you talk about it as if it's something men passively allow to happen to them, rather than something they play a huge part in making happen.

If men felt so strongly about looking after their children, they wouldn't let it happen. Why aren't they agitating for paternity rights, why don't more of them request part time and job share? Why do so many of them allow themselves and their partners to end up doing these stereotyped roles? Why are they so prepared to allow the mothers of their children to make such drastic career sacrifices, while they themselves make such drastic family sacrifices?

Women marched and agitated and wrote to their MP's and went to industrial tribunals and wrung every single concession out of society to get some economic rights. If men are so concerned about getting to spend more time with thier children, where is their struggle? Why aren't they using their political muscle to insist that the workplace and the home changes, so that they can do more housework and childcare and less paid work, and thus enable their partners to do less housework and childcare and more paid work, so that the score is more even and the couple are more equal?

All I know is that my child is 13 and has never had a penny. The CSA have failed totally. Last year I threw away 3 large boxes of paperwork and gave up the ghost. Father and I will NEVER agree and in any event he is off the scene, like many deadbeats and has just left us to it.

He's either self-employed, having more children (who take precedence) and always get a "nil" assessment! It sucks.

The only reform the Govt needs to make is to enable public bodies e.g. local authorities, Inland Revenue to ask for PROOF of child support payments and if the absent parent cannot prove it, or do not have cogent reasons for not paying, then there should be serious sanctions such as the threat of imprisonment.

My parents divorced and I would have hated (and refused) 50-50 care.

Maria Miller just sends back an automatic response about this subject by the way (I have seen another persons copy as well as mine). Very easy to pick holes in and write one back though. They haven't thought it through at all and are just crossing their fingers we are going to lie back and get trampled on.

The main problem I see is that nobody in mediation or the courts have the authority, the time or power to demand the real income information from the NRP's employers and to force a direct payment of maintenance direct from the employer. The CSA can, perhaps rather than pushing everyone to mediation what the government could do would be to authorise the CSA to see IR records directly instead of letting them beg to employers and NRP to provide, please, the correct information.

If the income can be revealed automatically for student loan payments, why not for child maintenance?

I think the current system is working but an alternative that is fair to all parties is a challenge to come up with. I personally know of 2 cases where the pwc went to csa even though the nrp was paying reularly and consistently through a private arrangement. The reason given was to try to gte more money, though in both cases the csa actually awarded less and refused to collect the voluntary extra contribution so now btoh situations are a mess. On the other hand I know of an NRP who gave up work and moved away to try to get out of paying and another who "forgot" to notify the csa when he got another job following being made redundant so there are faults on both sides.

Without a doubt the current system is failing pretty much everyone - my own experience of using the CSA is that they are inefficient, short staffed and if your particular case worker is on holiday you haven't got a hope in hell of anything getting done until they get back. If them charging means more money in the system to make it work better then I'm all for it, but I don't think that will be the case in all honesty as there is just too much wrong with the current system. It needs a complete overhaul and rethink imo, from how cases are assessed to how the money is collected and paid.

That should say the current system ISN'T working!!!

I wrote to Miller and another Conservative Mp in February and still have had no reply from either. However, I am not suprised given their track record in replying to letters.

I have been staying away from threads about the CSA for a while because I always come away feeling the same. I feel like I am either 'greedy' or a 'gold digger' or 'lucky' or all three, for my children to be in reciept of maintenance through the CSA. not to mention of course, having to be eternally grateful and indebted to him for financially contributing minimally to the children as they grow up.

Someone always suggests 50/50 care. I cannot see how that would cut costs. If both parents 'share' say 4 children, then each parent will need bedroom space to accomodate them and that isn't cheap. On top of which, I am assuming there would have to be some part time work going on, which is less income. Would housing benefit pay for rooms in a house that were empty for half the week? Also, do children want to be shipped around like 'objects' or possesions or a travelling side show? I guess it's ok if it works for one family, but a rule to blanket everyone else in is riddiculous and certainly not one I would want and certainly not one my ex's new partner would want [or my ex].

As for RP's applying to the CSA because they think they might get more? Well, so what! if there is no relationship then there will be no trust so that isn't really a suprise and in actuall fact, why not? And if the CSA calculate that actually the NRP should be paying less maintenance than he/she was then there is two ways to look at it:

1. if he/she was decent [the nrp] wouldn't he/she continue paying the higher rate so as to keep the children in a manner to which they were accustomed wouldn't they? or,
2. if he/she [the NRP] then decided to go along with the CSA calculations, then that's that-not much you can do about it. I guess that is a risk you take!