help child support maintenance

guinness34

can anyone help me

my eldest daugher moved in with my ex, his wife and daughter in march or april of 2005 until 1st january 2006 he is claming maintenance for her for this time (she was 16 in oct 04), she started collage in sept 05
her father dose not work well he does but cash in hand jobs, i have a full time job and i do overtime to pay my rent as yes you can guess i'm in debt too so i have to work overtime to help clear them.
i had a letter from them this morning wanting 595.60 over 4 months but he has paid nothing for his other daughter :mad: is it worth putting in a claim for or should i just pay

aMeLia'S~MuMMY

You will need to pay this money as long as the assessment is correct, you say that you daughter went to college in Sept 05 you need to ensure that the course she was doing was classed as full time non advanced education for her to be an eligible child for CSA maintenance payments. ( for your ex to have had a valid claim for that period)

You also say that they have asked you to pay 596.50 over 4 months, what is this for? You need to telephone them and speak to them regarding these payments if you are saying you cannot afford to pay over 4 months, however I am unsure as to how little or much on the New Rules they can ask you to repay.

If the assessment was indeed correct you will need to pay this money as unless it was wrong you are liable to pay this money. I would also put a claim in against your ex, you may only receive £5 but this is better than nothing towards your daughters upkeep

:A

Scarlett1

can she just not pay it and ignore the letter ? it seems to work for a lot of absent fathers.

Prudent

If the claim is from the csa, you will need to pay. You may well be able to get it spread over a longer time, if you are finding it hard to pay arrears. You can claim for your other daughter, but put it in asap.

kelloggs36

If you have another daughter, claim for her asap but you will only get a fiver in return if he is on benefits! Is this a CSA claim, or one he has concocted himself?

Mr_Green_Genes

A lot of assessments are wrong. In 2000/01, the percentage of incorrect assessments was 32%, according to the CSA's own figures. Since then, of course, they've gone into melt down so who can say what the figure is now.

So, my advice is to challenge the assessment. However, aMeLia'S~MuMMY suggested that you phone them. My advice to everyone is NEVER, NEVER communicate with them by telephone, unless you get a guarantee of a confirmation of what was discussed, in writing. The reason for this is that the CSA are simply not to be trusted to keep their word. I've lost count of the number of cases I know of where the CSA have quite simply lied over the phone, or made statements that they've then denied later. You have no proof of anything if you rely on the phone.

They may have started off by using the phone to save time, make things easier etc., but they've got wise to it and now use it to their advantage. And believe me, what's to the advantage of the CSA is never to the advantage of us, either PWCs or NRPs.

Oh yes btw

Scarlett1 wrote:

can she just not pay it and ignore the letter ? it seems to work for a lot of absent fathers.

That's a bit sexist, frankly. I'm a male PWC and am owed a lot of money so it's not just nasty men doing horrible things to poor defenseless women, believe me.

kelloggs36

Mr Green Genes - sadly you are so right. I used to visit all sorts of people in my Face to Face job. Mostly NRPs who would not pay. Whilst it is fair to say that most are men, there ARE a few female NRPs out there and this to me seems worse because there is always the assumption that the woman would want to keep their children, and if they can't they would want to ensure their upkeep. Those I dealt with were not like this. They were worse than the men I dealt with!!! Of course I'm not saying all men want to abandon their children, and there are many, many out there who do all they can and take their responsibilities extremely seriously. Unfortunately, there are also many that don't. So gender appears to make no difference in the role of NRS or PWC.

I would not go as far as to say don't talk to the CSA on the phone, but if you do, get names, times and numbers you called. Also, back up in writing what you discussed and keep a copy. Tedious, but effective to keep a log when it goes wrong.

Make an offer to pay off what is owed in installments of say, a tenner a week (or maybe a bit less if this is not affordable) as the amount owed is actually tiny in the grand scheme of things. Not tiny to the OP but overall, when huge arrears that exist in some cases (25k in mine!) they allow stupid amounts to be paid off which take up to 40 years, so you can definately negotiate an amount to pay over time.

As this is on the new system, it is less likely to be wrong than the old days, but it can happen, so check the figures used. Have they used the correct net income? Have they deducted 15% in respect of your daughter who lives with you? Have they correctly calculated 15% of what's left?

I may be wrong because I have never worked directly with the new system, but for some reason I think that if you have a child each, it cancels out the other, so you need to enquire about this asap. It may be that because you have not claimed for your other daughter, this has been the reason for the assessment. Please don't quote me on that, as it is just a vague recollection and may be just something that was banded about at the time.

Mr_Green_Genes

kelloggs36 wrote:

I may be wrong because I have never worked directly with the new system, but for some reason I think that if you have a child each, it cancels out the other, so you need to enquire about this asap. It may be that because you have not claimed for your other daughter, this has been the reason for the assessment. Please don't quote me on that, as it is just a vague recollection and may be just something that was banded about at the time.

As far as I know, it doesn't work like that. Maintenance will be calculated according to the formula in each direction. Madness, I know but that's government for you!

Scarlett1

Mr_Green_Genes wrote:

That's a bit sexist, frankly. I'm a male PWC and am owed a lot of money so it's not just nasty men doing horrible things to poor defenseless women, believe me.

not sexist at all its the truth, the CSA is in a terrible state, you only have read the board to see the PWC that are owed thousands from the NRP, me included :rolleyes:

kelloggs36

Me too - 25k infact. BTW he failed to attend his committal hearing yesterday, and so a warrant has been issued for his arrest without bail. Watch this space.......

guinness34

thanks for all your support and advice this was my frist time' but i have read a lot of threads for some 6 months. so thank you all once again x x x x