Where is the money going?

January 4, 2012

The CSA started taking over £500 a month from my ex husband for his son from a previous relationship. This crippled him financially. After we split up, we reamined very good friends and as i worked and knew how skint he was due to the CSA i never asked for a penny for our daughter. In the end he was struggling so much i claimed for our child knowing they would have to halve the payments between the two children. This enabled me to give my exhusband £250 per month to help him out. Madness some may say but i am on a good wage, he is the father of my child and it was money i didnt need. He however couldnt afford to eat! His need was greater!

Anyway, sure enough they started paying me money which i would then give him back. I have never questioned the amount over the last 7 years. However, today, i looked on my online banking and found that they had paid me £18 for the last 3 weeks. This differed from the normal amount which ranged from £32-£35 per week. When i phoned them today, in the presence of my ex husband, the guy told me they take £533 a month from him direct from his wages and that from that £290.53 is for our daughter. I HAVE NEVER EVER RECEIVED THAT AMOUNT PER MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!! Where the hell is his money going? Doing the maths, if that is the amount that should be paid to me, i should get £72 per week for a 4 week month and £58 for a 5 week month. That has never been the case.

So i am now awaiting a call back as they need to look into it. They shouldnt bloody need to! My ex husband has struggled to even feed himself over the years as they have taken so much money and now we dont even know where its all gone! RIDICULOUS!!!!

I know this story is out of the norm, the norm being people not paying etc etc and i feel for those who have very different circumstances.

But this goes to show that even amicable parents who get on really well even when estranged get screwed over by the CSA. He has paid his money direct and it appears some of it is vanishing into thin air! I only ever applied to help him and it now appears we have both been done! Absolutely livvid!

Comments

  • joanne says:

    They seem to be screwing many nrps on a paye system….luckily you two ate amicable, yours isn’t the only case where an nrp is paying hundreds and the pwc not seeing it, csa think that parents are at loggers heads that they don’t communicate about these things, pwc accuses man of not paying when he could be paying way over the odds. They keep payments in high interest accounts, or lose payments which miraculously turn up…..how else do you explain the 25 million they made in bonuses last year….for a supposed non profit organisation? It’s fraud on a huge scale that no one is investigating, no one will touch them. My advice complain in writing never speak to them on the phone, email them, [email protected] and email your local mp to get some answers. Well done for being a friend to your ex husband and not foe…..your child is very lucky. Good luck x

  • Dolphin keeley says:

    Well done you are a great PWC it is nice to see there are good PWC out there. The good PWC is very hard to find sadly well done for not useing your child for money you are a very good mother. keep up the good work.

  • Craig says:

    Well done you it is good to see a good PWC As well as emailing Ian Cable of the complaints team from Washington you may also want to email the focal point [email protected]

    cheers

    Craig

  • Mick says:

    If you and your ex are amicable, why do you need to use such an incomptetent bunch of oafs like the CSA. Get a private arrangement set up between you and your ex and cut the CSA out of the loop completely. They cant stop you from taking this course of action. Their job is to chase either parents who are not amicable or NRPs that wont or dont pay. Nothing more. Allowing the CSA to continue bankrupting your ex isnt going to be any good to anyone in the long run is it! Once you have set up an amicable private arrangement hopefully both you and your ex can then put your heads together to see about getting back from when what they have taken and get that money back from them. I am not blaming you in any way ok so i hope it doesnt come across that way. The CSA do tend to create animosity between ex partners because of their stupidity and totally unprofessional way that they go about things.

  • Mick says:

    getting back from the CSA i meant.

  • John says:

    Where is the money going? M.P.’s expenses!

  • joanne says:

    Muck if you read she done it to less his payment for his first daughter and then gives the money back to him as she doesn’t want to see him struggling….she is on her exes side. But csa now are keeping the payments, that’s the big issue…why? How many nrps are paying way over the odds and pwc not getting hardly any what the csa are collecting?

  • joanne says:

    Mick sorry, on phone.

  • lucyloo says:

    my husband is paying £88 per week to csa but ex is only seeing £18 of it. Thats less than child benefit amount so how can she support a teenager on £18? and because they are taking £88 of my husband, he can’t afford to pay much more to help her out. Its so wrong, why can’t they just F~*K off and leave us alone?

  • Mole says:

    Just been on the phone to the CSA for another 1 1/2 hrs due to their incompetence and spent a couple of hours writing a letter to my MP -again- last night all when I should be revising for exams.

    They are a nightmare, with help from out MP we managed to get almost £6000 back from them last year, as they had been taking more than they should have from my husband for years and holding it in their bank account!!! WTF!!

    Now they are saying that he can no longer pay by standing order and has to set up a direct debit, I explained to them that we refuse to do this as we want to be in control of what they take as they have messed up with our case so many times but they have said hard luck if we don’t set up DD then they will set up DEO. My husband has never once missed a payment, he has been continuously messed around by the CSA.

    They are now telling us that he owes them over £1000 because he had a pay increase in 2009 which we informed them about straight away, but it took them 2 years to do the reassessment. When I try to make arrangements to pay they say they will send a schedule out so that we can start making payments but the schedule never arrives? Then we get more calls from enforcement saying we have to pay NOW and so it goes on.

  • chall says:

    Hi Loren,

    Did your ex’s first case commence before or after 03/03/03, if it was before he would have been subject to phasing, which can last up to 5 yrs.

    To gain a monthly amount the agency calculate a weekly amount, which is x 52 and ÷ 12, so you will see no difference in the amount received for a 4 or 5 week month.

    Has your ex applied for his Data Protection File and a complete account breakdown?
    It will cost £10, but once in receipt he should receive everything the agency hold on him, including how their calculations for both cases has been apportioned.
    It may be an idea for you to apply for yours also, then you could compare the contents.

    chall ~ afairercsaforall

  • John says:

    @ Mole

    In the telegraph in late December there was an article, where Maria Miller DWP, announced that the CSA are writing off £300 million pounds of maintenance as uncollectable. You have done the correct thing going to your M.P.

    My M.P. supported my case to the Parliamentary Ombudsman for prolonged and continued maladministration! You may ask your M.P. to do the same in your case!

    Unfortunately, my M.P. the Ombudsman the CSA and the ICE all colluded in denying me a democratic ruling. I was ‘stitched up with £6,400 of imaginary arrears. The lesson I learned was trust nobody, They are all as thick as thieves!

    I have recently wriiten to the Ombudsman highlighting the write off of £300 million pounds by Maria Miller as being unfair. I have also e-mailed the European Commission Ombudsman to highlight the misgivings of the UK stance of writing money off, when others who do pay are hounded!

    There are people under-paying, over-paying and not paying at all! £ 3.8 billion pounds is uncollected whilst the CSA/DWP repeatedly hound those who do pay, with made up arrears! The three tier system CSA1, CSA2 and CSA3 are all paid at different levels. This breaches Human rights legislation!

    The system is flawed and not fit for purpose! Read, Digest and the next time you contact your M.P bring the above to their attention!

    Good luck!

  • Mick says:

    @ Joanne. Yeah, i knew what i was trying to say. Somehow it all came out muddled. I am on their side, not the CSAs. Doh!

  • Mick says:

    I could have worded that better couldnt i. I wasnt meaning to infer that the ex wastrying to bakrupt the NRP. I meant the CSA

  • Bodie says:

    Hello all,
    Can i start by saying that the CSA are rip off merchants with no hearts.
    I have erote on 1 of theese sites a few days ago but my storie did not appear.
    Any way i am on your side, the CSA should be abolished but i believe this will not happen untill 2013 or so they say!

    I myself had been asked to pay £97.00 a week even thought i was not working nor in this country. This was some years ago.
    Also i have had to pay 2 lots of back pay £1200 and £2700 but they did not explaine why or how this came about.
    Now i pay £87.50 a WEEK and have done for 5 years now and have another 18 months to go.
    Believe you me i get real angry and frustrated sometimes as i only take home just over £200.00 a week but i may as well bang my head against a wall as every time i contact them i am given different answers to the same questions.
    But i know there are people out there who are worse off than me.

    Good luck to you all.

  • Michelle Cunningham Penrose says:

    Hi, I wouldn’t hold your breath for a call back! Me and my husband have been fighting with the CSA for about 4 years. Originally we had a letter at the end 2007 saying my husband owed £1500 in arrears. We didn’t understand why so rang them up to find out what was going on. After several phone calls and being promised they’d ring back we heard nothing! Refusing to change the standing order until they could tell us why the money was owed as he had never missed a payment they ended up taking £130 a week out of his wages instead of the £23 a week he’d been paying. Their reason was that he owed the money and they were taking it. Managed to come to a better agreement eventually!! We found out that the CSA had made an error at the begining of the claim 4 years earlier by £5 a week which added up to the £1500. So we were happy to pay what was owed. However 2 years later baering in mind they were responsible for taking the payments straight from his wages, we recieved another letter saying he was £1000 in arrears. Again after many phone calls no returned calls and having them blame the employer for not following intructions we were really losing it with them. Over an 18 month period we were told they needed to do a break down that would take 6 weeks. 7 times we requested this and it was never done!!! We spoke to managers that promised to look in to it and call back. They never did. After 34 phone calls and getting nowhere we contacted the local MP. Within 15 days we had the breakdown! And right enough he owed the money but again it was due to their miscalculation as they had been responsible taking the money. Then!!!! We paid off all the arrears that they caused and the payments should have been reduced to £46 a week as we’d been paying £59 to clear the arrears and it hasn’t happened!!!! 6 weeks now and again they’re trying to blame the employer and again they aren’t calling back and again they say they need to do a break down. We are giving it 6 weeks and then going straight to the MP. I don’t understand how people can do their jobs so badly or not at all!!

  • Michelle Cunningham Penrose says:

    I also want to say that my daughter’s dad is not my husband and we have a private arrangement. In 8 years we’ve never had a problem!

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