Long time lurker, first post so please be gentle.
Exh and I have been divorced a number of years we have 3dcs. Number of issues over the years with him not seeing dcs and not paying maintenance. I ended up going to to child maintenance and he went onto collect and pay. He made payments on time so earlier this year they let him go to onto direct pay.
In July he changed jobs, big wage increase (over 25%) and then didn't pay maintenance. He claims that work messed up his tax code and he had no money. I got the odd £100 but nowhere near what he was suppose to pay. I contacted child maintenance in August and reported him and they started to contact him to arrange payments. Since then I'm just getting nowhere four months now without payments and he owes thousands in missed maintenance. I am massively struggling without his money, I work full time and can cover bills food etc but leaves me no money for clothes, Christmas etc
Child maintenance keep telling me they are in negotiations with him. He has offered to start paying me (but still had nothing) and to pay back arrears at £80 a month and said that's all he can afford. He lives alone in a rented one bed flat (I know how much his rent is as I looked online when he moved in it's a couple of hundred a month less than 15% of his income) he has dcs twice a month and spends money on expensive computer games, takeaways etc so he's hardly skint! (They were there at the weekend and ate out for every meal or had a takeaway). Turns up at my house in new trainers and named clothes etc.. can't have dcs next weekend as he has tickets to a concert booked. He did have huge amount of debt when we split up and I still get debt collectors here looking for him.
I'm not happy with the offer of £80 as this will take over 2 years to pay back arrears he has built up in 4 months and I think he can afford more than this, but think he's in so much debt he wants to pay that back and not pay me. So child maintenance said they will try and speak to him but they just move so slow. Every time I call for an update, they haven't been able to get hold of him yet! But the longer this goes on the more he owes in arrears.
I'm just at a loss of what to do? How can it take over 4 months to sort this, I'm panicking about Christmas as I just have no money without lumping things on my credit card which I really don't want to do. Any advice from anyone who has gone through this would really help.