CSA help if anyone can please

babyblade41

ve been married to my husband for nearly 10 years (2nd marriage) and in all that time there has been problems with CSA and his alleged arrears.

We have had no end of rows over it and it's cropped up again.

The CSA have been back and forth trying to claim the arrears , they say approx 12 k . I am pretty sure they have got some of their figures wrong as he had letters saying nothing more was owed.

The kids are grown up now but this is still ongoing and CSA have written to his employer re an attachment of earnings letter.

He has stated he will go self employed to force a court appearance so that he can show everything in court.

As someone who has children with someone else who again are grown up , we have never had a problem with this as it was never necessary and we still have a good relationship

My questions are, will going self employed stop the amount of money coming out of his earnings and secondly, will they take into consideration my earnings in all this as I earn considerably more.

They asked before about my income and as I don't have a relationship with his children and provide a house and pay all the bills with a relatively small contribution from my husband (I don't mind this) I will not divulge any information to anyone apart from HMRC.

We have only just got back together after a separation and after just a few short months the CSA are knocking on the door again.

I'm so desperately worried and the tension is unbearable. I can't seem to find out for definite what happens now and how long this will all take.
It also seems very coincidental that we hear nothing in the past 18 months and now as we seemed to have worked out our differences it starts again

Just one other thing he doesn't deal with any of the correspondence himself, he has always had a friend deal with it who quite frankly is useless, I accidentally saw a letter he wrote to the CSA once and it was full of inaccuracies and playing on a heart condition. This bloke does have a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way and can be quite confrontational and yet doesn't know what he is talking about half the time.

I was a business woman for many years who is now retired so I'm not stupid but this is something that I know nothing about and need guidance as everything I say according to him is rubbish and his friends advice is gospel
Thank you far any help in advance

shoe*diva79

Your husband needs to apply for his file so he can see if the arrears are a true figure. It costs £10 for the whole file, this will include telephone conversations etc.

Once he has the file and can see how the arrears have come about he can then see how best to move forward.

Sounds like your husband has had a bit of 'head in sand syndrome'. If he has accrued arrears then they will need to be paid and going the self employed route wont help much, the CSA can and will put charges on your home (if owned) and have been known to take money direct out of bank accounts.

Lovetoread

Hi babyblade41,

It sounds like you're in a very stressful situation.

First advice I would give you, is speak with your husband about ditching his friend. He obviously isn't making things any better for you both and quite frankly, isn't any of his business anyway and doesn't effect him in the slightest. I'm not sure why your husband would chose him over you for help and guidance, you're in this partnership, not his friend.
I'd like to point out that if your husband's friend is sending letters on his behalf, the CSA can only assume they are coming from him directly. He is treading in fairly dangerous water if he is letting his friend speak to the CSA like this as it will reflect badly on him.

Secondly, if you're absolutely sure the CSA have made errors (and lets face it, it's quite likely they have), I would suggest your husband requests his file from the CSA. This would cost £10 but it'll be worth it, as you can go through and nit-pick everything they have on him and hopefully find where they've gone wrong.

Good luck.

babyblade41

Thank you both, I'm not sure he isn't in arrears to be honest. And agreed arrears need to be paid,
I bought my 2 children up but they never financially or emotionally missed out from my ex and I ever, they maintain a loving relationship with both of us and we only live a few hundred yards away from each other.
Anyway i digress

I feel as though I don't know the full extent and think his advisor has actually made things worse,

This whole thing has been going back and forth for 19 years, although the back pay I think maybe from 2005

He had a letter in 2011 that the case was closed and nothing further to pay . I haven't seen this letter, but after doing some research it says that if it was on the old system then it can be re-opened using the new system and be recalculated .
I'm not sure if that is correct, if so then the arrears could be at the original 12k figure..

I don't want to spend the rest of my life financially supporting to a small degree forever evading a bill that needs to be paid.

God knows I have had to pay some dreadful tax bills in the past but they have to be paid.

Basically if it's owed it's owed

RAS

The first thing to do is to make the Subject Access Request (£10).

Until you have the file there will be no way of finding out if he owes anything or not.

If you read this forum people have been pursued for £Ks they do not owe, told they owe nothing when there are debts etc, etc.

babyblade41

Thank you, I will request this if i can, the subject is quite difficult at the minute and it's hard to approach without raised voices.

shoe*diva79

If his friend has been masquerading as your husband when in contact with the CSA then very shaky ground ahead as he could have agreed/ignored anything and your husband may be none the wiser. This can affect things like appealing decisions so its important you/he finds out exactly where he stands.

babyblade41

I'm not sure how this guy has come across in correspondence, I dread to think. The one letter I did see was that he sounded as though he had some sort of legal back ground as he used "my client" to refer to him.
God only knows !!!

clearingout

and if he owes £12k, you have a husband who refused to support his children for a considerable period of time...and who, rather than deal with it, put it into someone else's hands and hoped it would go away.

PreludeForTimeFeelers

I believe that the DWP have now done away with the £10 fee for a SAR.

13Kent

Ask your husband to tell the CSA that he agrees to you speaking to them on his behalf - you can have a password put on the account to allow you to do this. Then ask for a clerical breakdown of the case which they are obliged to send you, (might take a while) and go through the figures carefully.