Hi I’m a lone parent to DD11. Her Dad walked out when she was 1 and hasn’t seen her since! Zero contact, no idea where he is.
After several years of battling with CMS and getting sporadic, crappy pitiful payments of £20/30 here & there (when he wasn’t changing jobs!) via attachments of earnings orders, them randomly recalculating it and generally driving me round the twist, I closed the case with CMS for my own mental wellbeing. Therefore, for about 5/6 years I’ve received absolutely nothing!
Until recently when I decided amongst other reasons, that enough time had passed for him to hopefully have grown up a bit and be willing to take responsibility….?
Long story short, according to CMS, he’s willingly given his details and have calculated £169 per month, via Direct Pay.
I guess what I’m asking is, does this sound like a reasonable amount? I’ve never ever received proper maintenance (besides the adhoc £20/30 random payments I mentioned above) so I haven’t a clue if I should be happy with this, ask them to dig deeper (is that a thing?), or just close the case and decide that yet again, it’s not worth the hassle?
Don’t get me wrong, I need the money! DD is going to high school this year… I just don’t know what to think about the amount?
I know it’s calculated to be proportionate to what his salary is, but I’ve no idea what he’s currently doing for a living. I also can’t help thinking that he’s going to give it a couple months and start job hopping again!
Although I was struggling a bit financially, it was so much easier not having to deal with the CMS!
I’m being ridiculous aren’t I!?