MSE News: Separated parents told: Agree on child support or face fees

BigAunty

Wyre wrote: »

I hate this idea. In theory it should work, I mean why would any parent not want to pay to support their child? In practice, from my own experience, it can be almost impossible to get some dads to part with their cash.

I am not obstructive in this, I just want support for my children. In this situation, why should the children lose out? Imo, in situations like this it is the NRP that should be bearing the extra costs as they are preventing amicable solutions.

I expect one of the problems with the CSA is that it tried to apply rules which were easily sabotaged and side-stepped by many absent parents, effectively making them toothless.

It also has a terrible bias in not taking into account the income of the parent with children.

We are a country with an embedded culture of lone parenthood and absent non-resident parents,one where it is easy for a parent to shun their moral responsibilities to contribute towards the costs of bringing up their children. We also have a culture where the parent with child can easily prevent the NRP from seeing the children and where access is similarly hard to enforce by legal means.

Unfortunately, the many thousands of parents who do not pay really don't experience much in the way of criticism or censure, nor do PWCs who give the NRP the runaround with access.

Lone parents in the UK receive amongst the highest rates of benefits and in work credits in Europe, and are a priority for social housing, which means that an absent parent, in around 90% of cases the Father, knows fully well that their children will get looked after by the state.

It just takes too many resources to intervene in every case and very easily to slip from the CSAs grasp. Leaving it up to parents to sort it out themselves is a more realistic approach given the CSAs poor success rates and the culture of non-compliance for child support and access.

Leaving it up to the parents to get support in arranging their private settlement and paying for it shouldn't be that bizarre a step - the state doesn't pay towards their cost of divorce, property sale, moving costs and other expenses associated with a relationship breakdown. I know these are one-off costs associated with a split, different from ongoing child maintenance, but just flagging up that parents that split up have to do a lot themselves without assistance or subsidy.

I read today that there are at least nearly 900,000 legacy cases that the CSA are dealing with - I don't know if this is just their partial caseload or their full one but it does give you an idea of the scale of the issue, the absolute mountain that got diverted to the taxpayers to deal with which is ultimately a personal and private family matter.

Also, some of the commentators were adamant that females who are the NRPs are worse at contributing towards their children than absent fathers. Again, I don't know if this is a true fact or not.

Wyre

BigAunty, I can only speak from my experience as I said in my post hence my mentioning dads. However, I did also say NRP which is not gender specific as I am very aware that it is NOT just fathers that can be support refusers.

I honestly think that if a DEO has been issued then the PWC shouldn't have to pay to receive the support. The NRP in that situation will have already proven they aren't cooperative so what chance does the PWC stand?

BigAunty

Wyre wrote: »

I honestly think that if a DEO has been issued then the PWC shouldn't have to pay to receive the support. The NRP in that situation will have already proven they aren't cooperative so what chance does the PWC stand?

I just don't think that you can legislate for rules that can be easily bypassed and are desperately hard to enforce. It is a noble, just and right that parents pay towards the upkeep of their children and a great shame when they have means and refuse.

Because of their absent parents stinginess, the children's quality of life is reduced and the relationship breakdown means that we will see hundreds of thousands, if not a million plus, parents who become elderly without the company or support of their children who they previously abandoned. That's a great shame, too.

But the reality of the situation is that NRPs simply have to lump it because of the weaknesses in not just the system that legislates and administers child support but the culture which means that many NRPs don't receive any kind of great censure for their tightfistedness. We get the society we deserve.We have great flaws in how we operate as families and communities and it has horrible consequences.

NRPs are disadvantaged,not because the future rules have biases and unfairness in them but because our society has tried to fix the flaws for some decades now and cannot.

It is only right that we shrink the state apparatus rather than artificially prop it up at taxpayers expense. It isn't just the failure of a piece of legislation or one agency but the truth of the matter that NRPs routinely shun their responsibilities and have done so for decades because this is how we live in our country.

We shouldn't need a CSA type of organisation but there is a big lack with regards to child support payments in our country.

We ran an experiment to see if we could address it but the Tsunami of need, the ease with which NRPs can get out of their responsibilities and the impossibility of having enough resources to intervene with success for the millions of cases it has dealt with means there is no other choice but to step back and accept the unfairness cannot be remedied by a CSA type body.

CSA was only ever a sticking plaster, had a facade of operating as an intermediary, a failed process.

summerspring

There was no such thing as the CSA in my day. Absent and errant fathers had to be taken to court in order to be made to pay maintenance for their child(ren). One man I am thinking of used to have a canny knack of being 'out of work' just as the court case was taking place, meaning he couldn't be ordered to pay anything.

turtlemoose

My own experience forms my view.

My partner and his ex had a private agreement (based on an amount that SHE specified) until she realised that his relationship was me was serious. She didn't like that, so she went to the CSA. My OH cooperated fully with the CSA, and responded promptly to EVERY letter. They still gave him a DEO, despite him sending them two letters and numerous phone calls confirming he would pay by direct debit. The DEO was a result of the CSA's incompetence, not my OH's reluctance to pay.

He now pays by direct debit (after the initial DEO expired).

His ex is spiteful, manipulative and malicious. She would happily sacrifice 4% of her money (which won't affect her as she earns significantly more than OH, and being a single parent still gets tax credits, plus child benefit) in the knowledge that she can sting OH for an extra 20%, when she knows his salary is lower than hers and that 20% will cause financial problems.

If an NRP has paid, and continues to pay, the PWC should not be allowed to force them to use the paid-for version of the CSA.

And just because an NRP has/had a DEO doesn't mean they refused to pay.

clearingout

izzyuk59 wrote: »

He even ended up back in touch with his child - a rare thing in avoiders..

really? my ex is an 'avoider' but he has very regular contact with his children. I know of others personally where this happens and you read about it regularly on child support/single parent forums. I don't think it's rare at all.

clearingout

turtlemoose wrote: »

His ex is spiteful, manipulative and malicious. She would happily sacrifice 4% of her money (which won't affect her as she earns significantly more than OH, and being a single parent still gets tax credits, plus child benefit) in the knowledge that she can sting OH for an extra 20%, when she knows his salary is lower than hers and that 20% will cause financial problems.

If an NRP has paid, and continues to pay, the PWC should not be allowed to force them to use the paid-for version of the CSA.

Do read the relevant literature before sounding off in this way. The new scheme is designed to stop this kind of thing.

You would do well to keep your bitterness in check. Plenty of non-single parents get Child Benefit and Tax Credits. Do you have an issue with that too? And her wage in relation to your partner's wage is neither here nor there. Both parents have a responsibility to support their children and that responsibility is not diminished just because one earns more than the other. As it happens, after a good number of years of hardship, I have clawed my way back and I don't need any support from my ex to be able to give our children a good life. But why on earth should that mean he gets away from the financial responsibility of having children scott free?

PreludeForTimeFeelers

The article doesn't really make clear that the receiving parent can't force the paying parent into CMS collection. They can avoid the fees by paying the receiving parent directly. The receiving parent doesn't get a choice about whether to accept these payments or whether to push for CMS collection, it's either accept these payments or accept nothing.

Dewpoint

When my marriage ended, my spiteful ex took the kids 400 miles away, obstructed every attempt to contact them, and brain-washed them into thinking I was some kind of monster.
What we need in this country is a fairer say for fathers (usually the non-resident parent), and a link between child maintenance and contact for both parents. The system is currently far too biased towards the mother.

moneysaymoneydo

If the non residing parent went for 50% parental rights ie sharing kids half then do they still have to pay? Just curious how that situation works!