Child Maintenance (CSA) questions (merged)

asandwhen

He is a lazy oaf!!! :mad:

calleyw

asandwhen wrote:

He is a lazy oaf!!! :mad:

And if he is getting rent and council tax paid. Why go out work. Better off not working.

I always thought that the benefit system was there as a safety net and not to stop people from getting back in to work. The whole system is all wrong. But that is for another thread.

Yours


Calley

lapat

let me put to you something from the other side of the fence
im not a bitter person but i have two step children with my wife(i do consider them to be my own children before anybody asks)
my wifes ex husband does everything in his power to not pay the csa the monies he is supposed to.in fact hes over £10k in arrears.he moves home every six months packs his job in as soon as they get a grip of him.in the nine years i have been the childrens father(youngest is 10) he hasnt even bought them a pair of socks
yet he can afford to drag us through the courts as we stopped overnight visits due to the youngest wetting himself on numerous occasions and he dried him with a hairdryer.and yet if you asked the 99% of absent parents they would gladly and i mean gladley pay all they could to make sure there child had everything they could
and no matter what we said in court they said he had hiss rights what rights hes not interested especially if he has to put his hand in his pocket
and before you start on the jealousey root i earn enough to provide them with everything they want which includes the eldest going to private school
oh and just one last note the eldest is going to uni and guess what although the goverment cant be a*sed to chase him for the csa they can means test me for her uni fees and they are making sure they get it now tell me how that works

FairyElephant_2

Don't get me started on the CSA & ex-partners........

My partner's ex cased the split in the first place, but 'managed' everything so well that she got the house (nice 3 bed semi with big garden) and contents without paying him his share of the equity or anything, and got herself a nice rich new husband (they then extended the house to twice it's size!).

Now he pays her a whacking amount of CSA money for his 3 kids - who we have to stay with us for long weekends at least every other weekend and some of the holidays in our dinky little terrace place...and every time we have them to stay she goes away to swanky hotels with new hubby, or on posh foreign holidays....yet she still send the kids to us in really scruffy clothes & shoes with holes in, claiming he does not pay her enough money to get them new stuff!!!!! I end up buying them things 'cos it's an embarrassment to be seen with them otherwise - sorry but people do assume they are mine, and I would never let my kids out in public like that! (and to be honest - ASDA do sell cheap kids clothes which look perfectly good - she is just too snobby to shop there!!!!!).

Then she has the cheek to get them to ring him every time there is a school trip... " mum says I can't go unless you pay half "... I thought CSA was supposed to cover stuff like that too!

See - you are not the only one who rants - I could go on for pages but you get the idea.......

My partner is, as far as I am concerned, a total Saint....he never says a word against her (in their hearing anyway), and works his ******'s off to give them everything he can, but he gets so upset when they phone in tears cos she won't let them do this or that unless he will pay up, that he always gives in.

mrsdee

You're leaning against an open door here. In fact my husband's ex is on her own (guy she split up the marriage for lasted just a short while - shame!) but what with her salary, family allowance, tax credits, money from my hubby every month (twice the CSA recommendation) and no mortgage, and car paid for by him she is doing very well thankyou, whilst we have to manage our budget very carefully (hence using this site!).

But we get the phonecalls - "I cant afford to pay for their school trips, I cant afford to pay for them to go to Scouts any more, I can barely afford to feed them, yada yada", and what's really rich "they will therefore turn into juvenile delinquents and it will be all your fault because you wont give me any more money!".

It beggars belief. Whereas madam can afford to smoke and also to get her hair dyed yet another weird shade of brassy blonde each week. One wonders where the money goes... We end up buying them clothes and school trousers etc because she doesnt care.

But you know what? At the end of the day the children know who it is who cares for them, I mean really cares for them. My husband (and I) would love to see them more often but she makes it so difficult to do so. She also changes access arrangements almost every time we are due to see them. I sympathise, I really do. But just remember, they are the ones who are unhappy. You should feel proud of what you have and what you do. Good luck!

Spendless

Even if someone paid for my kids clothes.birthdays, christmas and holidays for me. My kids would still cost me money.

It costs me more on my shopping bill for 4 of us than 2. Heating and lighting is used for longer periods of time. Schools ask for donations for non-uniform days and so on.

To the OP- if the resident parent were to work 16 hours or more his income would be topped up via the tax credit system and he would also keep your maintainance money -which you are currently giving to the state as he is on IS.

If he did this he would (probably) have to pay full rent/mortgage/council tax and school dinners.

CAB can do a better off calculation for him.

If it works out he is worse off financially by working but goes ahead and does so then you will still be paying £50 a week but there still won't be any extra cash to spend on the kids.

I'm sure you can have maintainance reduced if you have the kids x amount of times a year (week?). Have you looked into this?

asandwhen

Spendless wrote:

Even if someone paid for my kids clothes.birthdays, christmas and holidays for me. My kids would still cost me money.

It costs me more on my shopping bill for 4 of us than 2. Heating and lighting is used for longer periods of time. Schools ask for donations for non-uniform days and so on.

To the OP- if the resident parent were to work 16 hours or more his income would be topped up via the tax credit system and he would also keep your maintainance money -which you are currently giving to the state as he is on IS.

If he did this he would (probably) have to pay full rent/mortgage/council tax and school dinners.

CAB can do a better off calculation for him.

If it works out he is worse off financially by working but goes ahead and does so then you will still be paying £50 a week but there still won't be any extra cash to spend on the kids.

I'm sure you can have maintainance reduced if you have the kids x amount of times a year (week?). Have you looked into this?

We do pay less because we have the children 3 nights a week - He owns his house outright (left to him in his parents will) so no housing benefits ect - we pay everything and I mean everything - everytime I see him he is wearing new YSL shirt ect - He is just pure LAZY!

calleyw

But is it not suppose to be halves

So if you pay £250 a month in CSA payments the parent with care is suppose to stump up the other £250 a month. You can't expect the abscent parent to pay for everything or maybe you do.

In our case the extras that needed to paid out is very little. As they would still need a 3 bed house (rented housing association so cheap)with out my husbands children being there as they have two other children one being a boy and one being a girl. So to be told it is £250 a month for one child is a little bit over the top. As I know for a fact the parent with care does not spend that much of her own money on top of csa payments on the child in clothes and food. Plus they get WTC and CTC. And she buys all his clothes from the charity shop (once found a tag left in them)and he eats very little adding at most £20 a month to the food bill. But both can afford to smoke. Funny that.

But we don't get help. Even with the CSA payments and pension payments take us below the max threshold of WTC we get no extra help. But if I go out to work then my wage is taken in to account but not the new partner or husband. Either they take all household income in to account on both sides or they don't.

I will be blunt they ain't my kids. The but and the big but here is that if my husband had custody of the children when we met I would not have been looking to his ex to pay us any money. Not that we would have got any. As we had become an famly unit which means that we would have used both wages to pay for everything. So anything we got extra would be a bonus.

But no system is ever fair and it is one we must live with.

Yours

Calley

FairyElephant_2

....reading your post. Sometimes I feel like it is just me!
She & new hubby are in New York this week, and we have the kids (their child together is with new hubby's mother - where she stays every time we have my partners kids with us so they get 'time alone together' ie. every other long weekend! how many other parents get so much time to themselves????? - I always said that she got herself pregnant just to get him to marry her!!!!).
I have run out of housekeeping money - already spent next week's too, so we will have a very lean month, and I will probably have to dip into my bit of savings again, and it's not like I buy loads of luxury food.....it is sooo hard not to be bitter about it all.
As I'm about to be made redundant, we are going to have to sit the kids down and explain that they won't get much for Christmas from us this year. We don't try to 'compete' (we do try to get them to understand that money isn't everything, and doesn't reflect how much we love them) but I know that B/F gets upset when they come & say 'mum & xxxx bought me this for birthday, christmas etc,' and he can't do the same. Guess I'm going to be spending some time on Ebay.......

calleyw

The system does not care about the abscent parents. I think if it could get away with it they would take all there money and make them live under the railway arches homeless. Mind you I think a few parents with care would love that idea.

Also the system and a large part of society see abscent parents normally fathers as being feckless and wasters. A small percentage are but most are not.

But you as the second family can struggle and go without because tough you are the second family.

My husbands ex is not to bright. She moaned about we had bought a newer car last year as well as an expensive holiday. What she forgets is that he is already paying her csa money. And the fact that the car was written off in an accident so we had no choice. No concern for us. And if he was dead what she get then. Nothing.

I had to get him to explain to her that we had to buy another car as without the car he could not get to his work. If he could not get to work then it would have been no job and no Job meant no CSA payments.

We had this when he lost his job she told him down the phone that he did it purpose and seemed to have no concern that it would effect us more so then her. As we had mortgage and I would be left to pay all bills by myself with no extra help what so ever. And not able to claim any extra help.

But as I said it is so much fun not. If me and my husband where not a stronger couple we would have gone by the way side because of the stress the CSA and the ex has caused us.

Yours

Calley