Child Maintenance (CSA) questions (merged)

Mr.Whitey

FBaby wrote: »

If there were arrears built up, then no clearly the csa were expecting him to pay more. We are not talking about £100s, but over £7,500. Clearly a reassessment was carried out at some stage and contact has been ignored. Even if it is a case of the csa trully never being in touch with him (doubtful), he should have know that with his new salary, he should have been paying more. Considering how little he was paying in the first place, surely he should have contacted csa to inform them that his salary had increased and paid a more reasonable amount of maintenance towards his children that he was able to afford.

We are dealing with an Agency that will close a case, telling the NRP that there are no more arrears on it, (or otherwise the case could not be closed), and then years later "re-open" the case, having found ££££ "arrears" on it, and wil not even tell the NRP how these so-called "arrears" accrued, this kind of behaviour from the CSA is well documented on this and other internet CSA forums.

You make a whole lot of assumptions from the OP, (read it again), to reach the conclusion that you do.

FBaby

There is no mention of any cases being closed and reopen. Can only go by what is written. That 5 years ago, it was assessed that he was to pay £40 a month. He should have known there and then whether this was correct or not on the easy to calculate basis of 20%. If it was, but then his income increased, but he never declared it, he knew he was at risk of his ex asking for a reassessment at any time.

If his income only increased recently, then he knows that it is impossible that he has accrued that amount of arrears, in which case, it should be easy for him to dispute it.

Mr.Whitey

FBaby wrote: »

There is no mention of any cases being closed and reopen. Can only go by what is written. That 5 years ago, it was assessed that he was to pay £40 a month. He should have known there and then whether this was correct or not on the easy to calculate basis of 20%. If it was, but then his income increased, but he never declared it, he knew he was at risk of his ex asking for a reassessment at any time.

If his income only increased recently, then he knows that it is impossible that he has accrued that amount of arrears, in which case, it should be easy for him to dispute it.

So if I understand you correctly, it is up to all us NRPs, having received our assessments, to then do the CSA's calculations for them, and then maybe give them a call and say something along the lines of, "I'm sorry, Mr/Mrs CSA, I think that your calculations are wrong, I think that I should be paying more..?" :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I could (and have) called the CSA every day of the week to find out how much I should pay, and received five different answers to the amount given.

FBaby

Its not that hard to calculate under csa2, their website does it for you. You don't have to wait for them to tell you what to pay and when, you can actually put that money (or the difference) side each month so when you get the bill for arrears you actually do have the money but that involves taking an active role in being a responsible parent rather than hoping getting away with paying less then what one should be for how long as possible.