CSA payment of £5/week is a joke - I'm appealing but need advice

[KIKI72]

My husband has been told to pay £5/wk for our daughter; its so annoying as he is living in our house (I moved in with parents due to mental abuse), got his own company, big bmw, out drinking at least 5 times/wk, goes on holiday yet claims he earns £100/wk maximum!!! He has 3 lodgers in our house but won't give me any income from it.

It costs me £15/wk to drive her to see him (he brings her back), she goes 3 weekends per month and hasn't paid anything towards her upkeep since I left the home.

Can I send copies of his invoices for the past 4 years to prove his earnings to CSA or will they contact Tax Office themselves?

How can I prove he earns money from the lodgers that he doesn't declare?

Am I being unreasonable to want more?

i get £5 a week to be shared between 4 dc,ex is unemployed by choice to avoid csa. it happens

who pays for her food etc when she's with him?

appeal,but guess it wont get you far if he's covering his tracks

You may struggle to get more child mtce out of him if he has accounts to back up what he's saying, so you need to get more outof him indirectly by way of spousal maintenance/secured provision order/capital division.

If you don't already have a solicitor, get one on board pronto would be my advice.

Thanks for your messages; I've not heard of spousal maintenance etc (mumblechum1) but I'll look into it.

ILoveTiffany - His tax returns state he earns £40k so how can he cover his tracks this way?

He pays for her food on a Saturday (which is 2 meals) and breakfast on a Sunday before she comes back to me but doesn't pay for anything else and never has done.

I do have a Solicitor but try not to use him because I can't afford it (spent £2k going through Residency and that was for 1 day so I represented myself and won thankfully for all the other court appearances); although I do use him when I run out of ideas and need advice.

Mumsnet members have given me loads of advice so thanks to everyone.

If he has his own business then he is probably declaring that he warns minimum wage, and takes the rest as a dividend. Perfectly legal unfortunately, although how the CSA haven't wised up to it before now I don't know.

Half the problem is that the CSA really don't give a shit, and they don't have the time or resource to investigate people properly.

You could send them any documentation that you have, and they may try and push for more, but he probably has a very good accountant that can provide wage slips detailing his wage, which the CSA wont argue against.

All I can suggest is stop driving your daughter to see him, tell him that's his responsibility unti he pays a reasonable amount of maintenance.

Has he bought you out of the family home?

Thanks for your advice but I can't stop driving her to him as it's in the court order.
No, he offered me £10k as a quick settlement (cheeky b***d) but there is at least £50k for me after he's had his cut so I declined it.
Will they not look at the outgoings to prove he can't possibly live on £100/wk?

I don't know, is the honest answer. They should, but whether they will is another matter sadly.

I don't suppose you can threaten him with moving back in unless he pays more as you cant afford to live?

CAB would probably be the best people to advise?

You need to Appeal on the basis that "his declared income is inconsistant with his lifestyle-" they call it Departures or something like that

i remembering filling in a CSA form for a client at work (i'm an accountant but we don't generally get involved in CSA). On the form there was a space to fill in salary but there wasn't a space to fill in dividends and it didn't ask at any point about other income not declared elsewhere on the form. The person in question was director of his own company and was paid a salary up to the NI limit (just under £500 a month then) and then the rest as dividend. This is the most tax efficent way of structuring remuneration so guess this is the structure in your exs case as well.

So when i filled in this form i only included his salary as there was no where else to fill in the other info and it wasn't asked for. Badly designed form if you ask me and if it hasn't changed i would guess your husband has done the same and not necessarily told a lie on the form

Thank you so much for your advice, hopefully CSA will think about the inconsistently as when the Accountant filled in our Tax Credits form he declared that our joint income was £45,000; how can this be if he only earns £100/week as my income is less than £10k dependant on work available.

I'm waiting for both CSA and CAB to call me back.

There is no way of moving back to our house as that would mean changing my Daughters school again and she loves her new school; it's 1 hour drive away (without traffic) so not commutable either.

Thanks for all of your advice as it obviously helped; I'm glad to say that I have won the CSA appeal and now entitled to £72/week.

That's great - well done :)