CSA payments taken for 2yrs when case should have been closed

IUYS

Im hoping that someone out there can help/advice me please.

I split up with my wife when my daughter was 5yr old, and back in 2004 i took the CSA to court disputing arrears that i owed after i had got documentation saying that my case was closed and then reopened again saying they had made a mistake. (You may not be surprised to hear that i still lost the case anyway!) Anyway I paid off the arrears (or so i thought!) alongside my normal payments and then following that continued to make payments until Sept 2010 which was the end of the school year after my daughter turned 16.

As i had had no contact with my daughter since she was 5yr old (dont get me going on that one!) i just presumed that she had left school. After the last occasion, i stopped payments but this time put the money to one side in case they wanted it back. Sure enough 3 months later i got the call saying that i still owed the money as my daughter was in still in education and i would have to pay until she was 19. The three months arrears were paid off over the following 12 months (not a bad result considerring they initially told me to put the £1000 owed to them on a credit card!) and then once again i continued to pay my normal £325 per month payments.

Fast forward now to September 2012 when i had heard from a couple of sources that my daughter was no longer at college so once again i stopped payment and put the money to one side. Once again 4 days before Christmas i got the phone call asking for payment. I told them that i suspected that she was no longer in education and wanted it looking into again before further payments were made which they agreed to.

Two days later i received a letter confirming that my case was now closed as of 20/12/12 (the day of the telephone call) with effect from 06/09/2010!!!!! This was confirmed in a phone call to them as i didnt want any comeback this time and i recorded the telephone conversation as eveidence if it would be required. By my calculations they now owed me in excess of £7500 and i had been paying £325 per month for 2 years when i hadnt needed to! Why this had not been seen or raised in December 2010 when they wanted payment i dont know.

After going through all the different departments and procedures, today i received a phone call telling me that after all the calculations they owed me £1100. When asked why it was only that amount they told me it appeared that there were some arrears from back in 2004. I disputed this and i am now awaiting a full breakdown to be sent to me.

My problem now is that i can only access bank statements going back 6yrs so ive no way of looking back to see if any of the figures they send a correct.

The questions id like to ask are
Is it possible for them to recall an arrear from so long ago and can anyone suggest where i go from here?

What really p#'@es me off is the fact that ive not been able to see my daughter and yet still did the right thing of paying for her and yet my partners ex just packs his job in and moves house so that the whole trace process has to start again when she tries to get anything and she is owed for the last 8yrs!

Anyway sorry for going on and finishing off with a rant but any help/advise would be grateful.

regards

Paul

justontime

We had a problem with ancient arrears appearing out of nowhere. Get your MP involved and make them justify their figures. We managed to get bank and other records going back 15 years to support our case, but you have to be persistant with the bank. If you do a DPA request for your documents you shoud get everything that they hold on you so you should be able to see how the alleged arrears happened. In our case we went from the threat of owing them thousands of pounds to them actually owing my husband money! Good Luck

his_wife

hi paul, im not an expert on csa, however, have experienced them for long enough to know they are incompetent at times!!

First of all, i would ask the csa for a break down of all your payments, which have been made, they can and should do this....they have a knack of adding money on, when in fact they should be deducting it!!, i would then go to your mp, and lodge a complaint there,,, they will soon get the csa to stand up and listen.

Good luck

his_wife

On a further note, the chances are, if you have been paying csa for two years,when your ex hasnt been entitled to it, chances are she has been claiming child benefit too, as the child benefit stopping, normally triggers the csa to stop taking payments.

IUYS

thanks for your coments guys. I am waiting for a breakdown as we speak (type) and from what they have told me my ex stopped claiming child benefit on the 6/09/10. Have never claimed anything in my life im not sure how all that works. I guess at this stage im just going to have wait and see what shows in the breakdown.

his_wife

The csa and cb are supposed to work alongside each other!! You would of thought that the ex would of queried as too why she was still getting payments,,,,,personally, I would go straight to the complaints dept,,,,,see where u go from there