The C.S.A and my earnings as the new wife

rippedoffnewwife

Hi all,
I will start at the beginning before asking the questions….
My husband has a son who is 13yrs, when the child was born he was no longer with the mother she told him that he will never see the child nor did she want any financial help. Fast forward until 5yrs ago, my husband receives a letter from the c.s.a informing him he owed arrears in child support totaling just over ten thousand pounds!! They had been sending letters to a very old address for years and he was assessed in absence, bet that sound familiar, Over the past five he has paid all the arrears back which has without doubt financially crippled us as a family of four, now we are looking forward to future and much more reasonable payments and the possibility of at long last being able to pay off our overdraft which we have lived for the past five years and to paying off the debts which we have due to not having enough money to live on. Now madam has stamped her feet as she can not afford to lose the almost five hundred pounds per month she has been getting off us and low and behold the c.s.a are now demanding all our financial information once again - we have had to send details of my earnings, I have read that they can not include my earnings or tax credits for my children to carry out the assessment can any one confirm this? Also with regard to housing costs any ideas of how they work that out? It’s all very confusing and I don’t mind admitting it that both my husband and myself are terrified that we are going to struggling for another five years after this re-assessment even through we received a letter at the end of august stating the payments will be going down to ninety-five pounds per month, as they no doubt will come back with a much higher figure even though we are still earning the same.
Thanks for reading my little query

Dancing_Shoes

In terms of your assessment, someone on here called Kelloggs may be able to help you if you send her a private message. If you are confused by the way your assessment is worked out then it would be easy for the csa to work it out incorrectly so it is definately worth having it checked and explained to you by someone in the know;)
Nacsa are also very good with helping work out your assessments so its worth having a look at their website to see whether you feel they could help you.
It is my belief that your childrens tax credits will be taken into account unfortunately (i'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be on to advise whether this is fact) but the biggest thing to tackle is understanding how it is worked out so that you know what you should be paying.

Zara33

As the child in question is 13 I'm assuming your husband case is on CSA1? Which will make things very confusing and i think i am correct in saying tax credits are used as household income.

Dancing_Shoes

If you are the new system then housing costs etc are not taken into account. Also there is no legal obligation to diclose your details and your assessment is very easy to work out as it is a percentage of your husbands salary with allowances for the children staying overnight with you (a minimum amount applies)

Angel3108

On CS2 they class all of your tax credits and child tax credits as income if your partner earns more than you. If you earn the same they only class half of the wtc and ctc, and if you earn more than him they don't class any of the tax credits as income. I think that is right?!

We found this out a few weeks ago when they used our intire tax credits as income, even the disability element for our disabled child. Not impressed with them using my childs disability to gain more, but nothing you can do, so hey ho! :mad: they then backdated it all to 2006 before presenting us with a lovely arrears figure :eek::mad:

Blonde_Bint

However, there is a csa3 in the making so lets hope that, they have taken into account these little niggles and you never know csa3 might do away with them.

can I ask, i'm not sure is csa2 a better way of being assessed than csa1? meaning have they tried to drop the wrongs of csa1 in favour of an improved method of workings out for csa2. (forget who is better off financially pwc or nrp i mean in respect of not skinning the nrp's shirt off his back and ensuring the pwc household recieves a fair contribution to child upkeep)

so when csa3 comes out we can compare, hopefully they can improve because they know what is a failure because they can see its not working on the previous cases, eg. the ctc's being assessed as income for one thing.

Angel3108

We are in the process of thrashing out the arrears with them, Nacsa have taken on the case for us as there are so many errors in the case from day one. ( just wanted to point out also that hubby has paid csa from day one, and is not non-compliant before anyone suggests it!)

rippedoffnewwife ( love the name!) I would ask for a complete break down of the figures they have used for income, and a breakdown of the arrears, you may just find a mistake or two, which you can appeal to have corrected but you must make sure that the assesment is correct.

speedster

you say "old addess"

now, the question is, at the time of their first correspondence, was it a "confident" address??? you will need your clerical files to find out .apply under the DPA.

if not, you can successflly have the aarears overturned as invalid as they have not made contact to a confident address.

you will have to go through the appeals process.

speedster

you can appeal. there is scope to reclaim wrongly paid amounts.

if they split, he moved out, then she started a claim at the address he was living at before the split, it's not a confident address.

you may have to take it to your MP and the ICE.

kelloggs36

Are you absolutely sure you are on CS2? When was the case originally opened? If the case was calculated wrong, it is not one of the reasons for changing from CS1 to CS2.

LizzieS_2

To add to Kelloggs36 post. All cases can go onto CS2 as in a computer system, but not all cases are calculated under CS2 rules (thousands are still calculated under CS1 rules).