Bio Mum lying about income

[Misty89]

Hi,
Looking for a little help please. My stepson lives with us full time and has for the past few years but we have never received any maintenance for him from bio Mum as she claims to have less that £7 extra per week and therefore doesn't have to pay anything towards his care. We know this is untrue and have sent child maintenance all the proof that we can - evidence of her self employed business, but because it isn't registered with HMRC they can't work out an income from it, evidence of her many holidays, botox, 2 vehicles on the road, nights out etc but they just keep coming back to us saying that HMRC have no evidence they can use. Is there a way for us to get her finances investigated properly, like to get them to look at her bank accounts, her spending etc? Because according to the woman we spoke to on the phone, the only evidence they've had from her is a letter that she wrote herself to say she couldn't afford to pay which they accepted? She was employed when we made the claim with her business on the side but when we made the claim she quit her employed job hence HMRC coming back with nothing. Has anyone else been in this situation? What can we do? Thanks!

You could shop her to hmrc I suppose

Are you sure they accepted a letter from her saying she couldn't pay? I've never heard of that before and I've dealt with Cms & csa for 13 years lol

You can request a mandatory reconsideration - then take it to tribunal & the fraud investigation team via CMS.

HMRC can only give Cms the tax returns once they've been self employed for a year and submitted - has it been longer than that?

But if she's taking it as cash then you won't get far 2bh
She'll just say she has a partner who's supporting her and she's allowed to not work.

Yes, they awarded us child maintenance based on the information from HMRC and she asked for a mandatory reconsideration and they rejected it and said she still had to pay (she never made a payment anyway), then a month later they sent a letter saying that she could no longer afford to pay anything and when we asked about it the woman said she had sent a letter in to say she was no longer working and could no longer afford to pay anymore because she left her job and earns her money off the books now. She told us to put in a change of income and our evidence and that it would likely be rejected so to request mandatory reconsideration. She said we'll need to do this twice before saying that we want to go to a tribunal and stuff so just wanted to check if anyone else had been through a similar situation and check that was the correct way to go about things in order to have her finances investigated more thoroughly.

Something about this doesn't ring true.

If you speak to CMS, they will be able to tell you that they have powers where fraud is expected and would be able to look into bank accounts and see income and transactions.

If it turns out she has this money because of a partner obviously they won't be able to tap that person's income for maintenance, but you seem sure it's her income that she's spending.

Stopped reading at bio mum