Child Maintenance (CSA) questions (merged)

Prudent

If the non resident parent moves around jobs it makes the CSA's assessments (and collection of money) very slow and patchy. Every time he tells them he has left one job, the current asssessment will no longer be valid. Your friend will be at a disadvantge if she doesn't know where he works because the CSA are very reluctant to put much effort into chasing up these things themselves.
If your friend wanted an accurate assessment her best way would be to ask the CSA to do an annual assessment based on his P60. This will give an accurate reflection of his earnings over the year.

I agree with what over posters are saying about good will. I guess this needs to balanced against how much your friend feels her children miss out on if she has insufficient money.

chugalug

My ex pays me £40 per week for his son. When I moved (15 miles up the road!) he reduced it by a fiver to cover his petrol costs. He has his son ever Sunday but never overnight. He takes him camping for a week once a year for which I have to give him the £40 back!! I have had to help with the cost of any outings he takes his son on as he already pays his contribution!! BUT having said all that the money is regular. My previous ex husband has given no end of problems which the CSA have only made worse. There are thousands of pounds of arrears which I won't ever see and his maintenance is erratic despite a deduction of earnings order. The CSA didnt make things better for us and given the choice I would never use them. If your friend can agree on an amount and this is paid regularly don't go near the CSA. I'd rather have a smaller amount regularly than fight for more as you end up fighting your ex and a govt dept that doesnt know how to co-ordinate anything!

Loobeylou

Well I guess the choice as to what to do for the best has been taken out of the hands of my friend, and that she will now be going down the CSA route.

She found out this morning (via her monthly bank statement) that her ex partner stopped paying her £50 weekly maintenance four weeks ago. So not only has he stopped paying, but has also incurred bank charges due to her account going overdrawn.

It appears that his latest vehicle and his new love have taken priority over the upkeep of his children.

I am sure you women out there who have been through something similar will have a well chosen word for him and others like hiim - my personal word begins with b, ends with d, and has five letters in between!

newfunk

I pay my ex £200 a month for my 3, and on top of that, I contribute to school trips, uniform, take them on holiday at least once a year, have them to stay as much as possible, and now my eldest is nearly 14, I pay half towards any haircuts/teen things...
Luckily my ex and I can tolerate each other now, it hasnt always been that way tho....

That is paid before I think about paying rent and bills etc....i sometimes think the CSA live in a different world than Normal People.....as often their calculations are miles out!

jellyhead

i don't mean to be negative but the csa could take years to even look at the case if she is on tax credits. my sister has waited 2 years for her case to be sorted out - initial forms were filled in by both but nothing has been done. she's been told because she works part time and gets tax credits her case is lowest priority. they give priority to cases where the mum is on income support. tax credits help with childcare and they ignore maintenance, so in their view your friend is getting enough, any maintenance she gets is just a bonus. i hope she has better luck than my sister, my sisters ex pays her 250 a month but i know there are lots of people in her situation whose exes don't pay.

if your friend is struggling with higher childcare bills during the holidays she should make sure the tax credits people are aware of the cost of childcare throughout the year including holidays, i believe they can help towards the cost of the care over the year, but they pay a set amount each month to cover the yearly amount averaged out over 12 months. schools are closed for around 16 weeks of the year so childcare bills will be higher during those weeks.

Coventry_Sister

Muslims try and agree on maintenance rather than go through the CSA.

A resident parent on benefits is persuaded to go through the CSA to claim maintenance and by doing so she will receive an extra £10 a week on top of her benefits whilst the man could end up paying a lot more than this. The extra money paid by the non-resident parent being used up by the CSA. Therefore non-resident muslim parents come to an agreement to pay slightly more than £10 a week to keep the CSA away.

Solicitors will try and persuade the resident parent to apply for maintenance via the CSA because that way the parents will keep hating each other and their services may be needed in the future.

margaretclare

I'm not sure why we have to have it pointed out what Muslims do - what they do is irrelevant to most of us (thank God!)

But obviously it would be the ideal situation, in an ideal world, if separating parents could make a rational and sensible decision about the allocation of money to maintain children and that this could be adhered to without going through solicitors, courts or the CSA. If everyone could do this then obviously there would never be any need for a body like the CSA to come into existence! Given that so many parents (usually the man, not always) try to walk away scot-free and leave the wife and kids with nothing, then CSA was necessary.

As the child of an unwed mum growing up in the 1930s/1940s I have some knowledge of what it was like living in days when there was no CSA and no benefits of any kind! Plus the social stigma...

Aunty Margaret

nekde01

The csa are a joke. My girlfriend was receiving nothing from her ex for her two kids even though he had a good job( in excess of £30,000 he boasted). She contacted the csa . Five years later she eventually got £42 a week with no arrears. Meanwhile I pay £300 a month ( on £24,000 a year) for my daughter .She stays at mine 3-4 nights a week and at my ex wifes once a fortnight as she prefers to live at her grans.The csa wont change my payment as they don,t believe what I tell them.

katyp

My partner's ex-wife wants to take his two children to live abroad in her home country (she has lived in the UK for the past 20 years).
My partner has been paying maintenence via the CSA, as his ex is on benefits.
He does not approve of her going, nor does he believe the move is in the children's best interests, but he has given up the fight, and has accepted that trying to stop her will serve no useful purpose, as he will be cited as the reason that their new, exciting, fun life abroad was blocked. If he doesn't allow them to go, they will refuse to see him anyway.
So ... the CSA has no jurisdiction outside the UK, so his ex has said she will be seeking a court order for maintenece for the children.
My partner and his ex signed a consent order when they were divorced, which stated that she had no further claim on any of his assets or he on her's, and she is paid no spousal maintenence.
Does anyone know if the court order will mirror the CSA amount, or can she ask (and be given) more?
We know that her first husband has just stopped paying maintenece for his daughter (she's 18), and we fear that she will try to get my partner to make up this shortfall through a court order, citing higher cost of living in her new country etc.
Any advice etc on how to deal with this?

Jet

I would think that a court would only order the same as the CSA, but I actually wonder if she would be able to enforce it anyway. After all, I've heard lots of stories of parents with care not being able to obtain maintenance because the absent parent is out of the country.

Somone I know wanted to take her 2 children to egypt with her to be with her new egyptian husband. The father of the kids fought her for custody and won! The courts looked at her finances and said she didn't have enough money to support the children to the standard of living they could get here. The mother agreed to stay in the country and still has custody of the kids, but he basically stopped her from taking his kids away - so it can be done.