CSA making us poor! What other measures can we take?

[whydothiswhenyoudothat]

My husband and I worked out our budget last night and we cannot believe that whatever we have got coming in, it is going straight back out again! Our biggest outgoing after rent, council tax, etc. is CSA. My husband pays for one child. He is also in arrears because of CSA as they fucked up his calculations a few years ago! Every month, £500 is going out of his account then we have got to pay everything else, including our DS who is 2. We both work - I work part time and he works full time. He goes childminders which tax credits help pay for but unfortunately my husband keeps doing overtime so it means my tax credits have now reduced so we are paying an extra £150 a month out of our own pocket paying the CM. I'm only on minimum wage and my husband only earns 18k a year.

I will explain what measures I am taking to save money:

• I change tariffs every year with energy suppliers, broadband and car insurance to find the cheapest deals

• I am cutting down the use of gas and electric and just warming up using dressing gowns and water bottles

• I shop in Aldi and Lidl. The cheapest supermarket I can go to!

• I am meal planning and home cooking everything from scratch. No takeaways

• We don't smoke or drink

• I buy non branded products and go for the cheapest I can in order to save a few pennies

• Charity shops if we need to buy clothes

I am doing everything I possibly can. I have been awake all night thinking about it :( what do I do? I feel like we are paying too much CSA and he has asked for a variation form but they will not send one because he doesn't qualify! We are just about living. My worry is our cars are old so if one our cars break down which we need to get to work we we both work over 10 miles away, and take DS to and from CM, then we are basically fucked (excuse the language).

@FairytaleOfWigan advice with a whole wedge of judgy judgy, not nice and not called for. You could have made your suggestions without the rest of it. This isn't AIBU.

I was trying to make the point (possibly badly!) that not all NRP are forced to give up 40% of their wages.

Ah I see, no that would be unusual. In my case NRP is self employed and was hiding income, he's certainly not paying 40% of his income, not even close.

As far as im aware tax credits are only assessed annually so any overtime he does will not be taken into account until the next tax year. Your payments should remain the same from tax credits till then

@Mumshappy you can update your income any time you like on the app, saves a massive overpayment at the end of the tax year. Tax credits are brutal with overpayments now and take it back in much larger sums than they used to.

Thanks crumpetsandcoffee I knew as I typed that I could probably be out of date with tax credits but wanted to say just in case OP didnt know and knew someone would say if I was wrong

I’m not judging, but as someone advised previously, to have 40% legitimately deducted, your husband must have avoided paying maintenance for a LONG time. It doesn’t happen because the CSA “messed up their calculations” a few years ago.

So either the CSA are in the wrong and it can be sorted, or your husband is telling you porkies!

If he really does owe this money, then whether it's 40% of his wage or not, he needs to pay it back. It is money owed to his child and men who go on to have second families that they cannot support unless they take money from their first family, are essentially passing the cost of their new family to their ex wife. Children don't cost less to feed and house, just because their parents have had more kids.

My advice is to get an accountant to clarify for you whether he really does owe this money and if not, happy days, but if he does then he needs to pay it and maybe you have to assume full costs of raising your child until he is up to date with payments. It's hard for you but there's no choice if you marry someone who already has a child.

My ex earns just under £27k and pays £360 for 3 kids, he has them EOW and gets a £12.50 a week discount for fuel to collect them. I'm not sure why your DH is paying £500, even with arrears, also is that including the discount for having a child living with you?

@Rikalaily please can I ask how this works. We have to travel 200 mile round trip EOW to see my partners two girls. We did when CSA was setup apply for the travel reduction but never heard anything back. Could you please give me so advice how you went about this what you submitted etc xx

@Rikalaily sorry re read and realised that it was your ex not your current partner

Lovelife12345 Our CM is managed by the CMS service now, it was switched over last Dec from CSA. He must have googled how to get a payment reduction because he asked them for the discount, they don't advertise that it's available.

@Rikalaily we applied for it, sent the train tickets of what it was costing us to visit and then heard nothing back. So will chase them and maybe report it again. They were very quick to send us a letter when we moved checking our youngest son still lives with him which is odd

Why is it always the current partners complaining about the maintenance and never the men.

I'm on three child maintence groups on Facebook and it's always the current partner complaining about it.

He obviously has a lot of arrears as my sons Dad has to pay £151 a month and they have doubled it because of his arrears.

Try some of the dad's forums festive.

You should have thought about money before deciding to add another child and working less. No ones fault bar the adults who made those choices.