Advice Please? Child Maintenance Service

[Clariana]

Hello,

Any advice will be really appreciated, my DH and I just don't know what to do.

I'll make it as short as possible. CMS say DH owes money to his ex DP with whom he had children. This is all historical as the younger child is now 31. He doesn't owe anything because he had always paid maintenance and then in 2004 he gave ex DP the family home, which was in his name only, she had never made a financial contribution to, he had no obligation to do so, they were never married. At that point they both agreed that was the end of the child support matter. She later sold the house in 2007 for £140,000.

We have a letter from exDP saying she was given the house and she agrees the matter was concluded in 2004. She maintains she has heard nothing from them since.

We have sent all this to CMS, repeatedly, over the years. Letters sent signed for, we have copies of signatures etc. Nothing, no acknowledgement, just repeated demands for the approx £3000.

Now they are threatening court action. Please tell us what we can do?

Anybody?

Have you tried sending a complaint email to [email protected]?!

They are usually quick to respond (I had a phone call the following day) maybe worth a try?!

I believe (not 100%) that neither of them can agree to waive CMS - even for a £140K house! This is to protect people from signing away rights with impact their child, possibly under duress.

So he might owe that sum, if a CMS case was ever opened? Or maybe CSA then, transferred to CMS.

Is the payment to be made to CMS or direct? Presumably his ex would be happy to repay it immediately?

He needs to first establish whether he does owe that amount - and he needs to ignore the house situation.

She can request to have the debts dissolved and close the case.
And no csa didn't ever automatically register cases with the cms. You had to request that in the changing over to cms.
I had to do it myself which was alot of faff.
The cms will do anything to lower their debt. They wiped away my exdhs debts calling them historical when my youngest was 9 a couple of years ago.
Cms arent there to help get money for rps and are totally incompetent at what they do.

I am actually really shocked you have been getting correspondence like this after so long they have been writing off child maintenance debts for years to try and lower the debt as they don't manage to get the money alot of the time from nrps.
If they wipe it all off it makes them 'look' like they are doing their job as the debt is lower.
Its an absolute scandel.

Was she claiming benefits back then? As back in 2005 when I was on income support any csa my ex paid got taken off my income support. Think I was allowed £10 a week of it the rest was deducted. If she was claiming benefits then the money could be owed to the dwp?
I’m sure someone else will be along soon with a better way of explaining it

Saladd0dger makes a really good point there that was the case also back then it must be 'their' money owed not due solely for the ex partner as trust me they would easily squash it if it was the ex partners. They write it off and you have to ask them and give them reasons why they shouldn't its disgusting. Different if its owed to them though.
(sorry as you must be able to tell I hate the cms😂)