Almost twenty years of CSA hell

My partner was divorced in 1989 a marriage which lasted 9 years and resulted in 4 children (all now in their mid 20’s some with children of there own). Contact with the children was stopped by the PWC a year after I got with my partner and he only occasionally got to see the children if it so benefited his ex! My partner eventually gave up even trying to see his children when they started to damage our property and got police involved with false assault and harrassment allegations against my partner all proved false by the police.

I have been with my partner 19 yrs now and we have 3 beautiful girls the eldest being 8 years old. My partner paid maintenance weekly to his ex cash in hand unfortunately, and after one of her usual tantrums she got the CSA involved, we have been fighting for a fair assessment since this time. My partner is a HGV driver long distance and as such has to pay his expenses (i.e. tolls, parking) which are recoverable from his employer and paid the following week He also gets an allowance for being out over night again an allowance towards meals, and accommodation should he so require it. The CSA include this as our income. In 1993, my partner was employed as a local driver (i.e. a day cab, no bed, with no nights out) earning a basic wage of £140. When my partner advised them he was called a liar, he was told by them he drove a night out vehicle and that he got an allowance for living in his as all truck drivers do!  My partner has lost 2 jobs due to the CSA and to quote one of his employers the reason for his dismissal was “to be honest with you Steve I can’t be arsed with all the CSA crap”, that was in 1993, and my partner at the time had no knowledge of the involvement of the CSA with his employer and couldn’t understand what he was talking about, the CSA had written to his employer, and as we have only just found out my partner’s correspondence was being sent to his ex partner!

The CSA wanted payments of £62 per week which we could not afford the resulting action a DEO was placed allowing my partner and I a protected income of £102 per week to live on we nearly lost our house due to this, my partner could never make the payments ordered on the DEO and therefore arrears began to accrue the DEO was eventually stopped as a result of my partner losing his job and he was ordered to make payments of £5 per week. Fraudulent assessments were put into the CSA by his ex wife, phone calls made to the CSA saying he was homeless and needed his post redirected to her address and assessments made on the information we believe was given by her or someone assisting her. Apparently due to this none response to mail from the CSA an IMA was put in place, based on income my partner was never earning therefore making it impossible to ever meet the payments required and building up substantial arrears.

Again my partner was called a liar when he denied ever making this call and we had to produce proof he had never lived at her address and never used it as a forwarding address and proof he had never been homeless!! Beyond belief!   Apparently due to this none response to mail from the CSA an IMA was put in place, based on income my partner was never earning therefore making it impossible to ever meet the payments required and building us substantial arrears. We were advised of the fraudulence by Maureen Stewart-Steele an employee of the CSA in Falkirk 2 and half years ago and told the case had to go clerical, and we should get Solicitors involved which we did. now 2 and half year later we are still no further forward except they have now finally come to a conclusion with regard to the amount of arrears (as every letter we ever had stated different figure ranging from around £18,0000 to the current figure of Approx £8,600. We have tried to come to some arrangement for payment with the agency previously but when they demand £157 per week from us and we have 3 children of our own to support, we found this an impossible sum to pay.

We have been advised by a CSA employee that our “3 children don’t even come into the equation” my partner “should not have gone on to have another family if he couldn’t even support the family he had”. On December 15th 2010 a letter was sent to us advising us of the £8,600 arrears and that they required a weekly payment of £85 and you have 7 days in which to respond and discuss the repayments, we received this letter the 20th December 2010 on the 24th December 2010 the 1st payment of a DEO (which we knew nothing about) was taken from our weekly wage. We have since found out that the DEO was forwarded to my partner’s employers dated the 17th December 2010 already in place before giving us a chance to respond to the letter giving us 7 days to respond!!! In January 2011 we received the DEO information letter which showed a protected income of £307. We have found out from my partner’s employers that their copy of the DEO does not have any information regarding any protected income and therefore they have to make the payments of £85 per week by law.

My partner only earned basic wage £250 over the holiday period, and would not have made enough to make the payment. We were left totally destitute over the holiday period with no way of contacting anyone until after the holiday season was over. As we were already living on a tight budget and only managing to repay priority debts, i.e. mortgage household outgoings, this has put us into financial ruin my partner is going away a week at a time with no money to support himself, leaving me and my 3 girls with school dinner money and some food in cupboard. We are at our wits end I am worried as to effect this is having on us as a family, in the early days of the CSA’s involvement my partner had at least twice that I know of thought about taking his life, once resulting in the police being sent to our house to check on his well being on a phone call from Falkirk.

In 18 years my partner will not take time off work in case he can’t make the payments due, he very rarely takes holiday time because his holiday pay doesn’t cover payments he will not take time off due to accident or sickness for the same reason, he has been walking around on a broken foot for the last 8 months!!! In 2003 his ex dropped the case then 13 weeks later reopened the case (we believe the benefit from the new rulings) for the youngest child 16 years of age as the child was going to start college in Cheshire where they were living, we found out that the child wasn’t even living at home and in fact was living in a flat just around the corner from us in Teesside, when we informed the CSA my partner again was called a liar!

How is it possible to deal with these people?????

We have provided the Agency with wages slips going back to 1992 provided with Office Copy Entries and Mortgage documentation to prove our address. Letters were sent to addresses which we have never occupied therefore my partner was unable to respond the fraudulent assessment doesn’t matter they are over looking this because wage slips were not sent with that application. So they conveniently ignore this matter! On one occasion My partner’s ex showed us a shoe box full of letters she had received from the Agency which details all of our income and expenditure, how they had this information was of news to us as I had never released information regarding my income to them (at the time I was an Office Junior earning £70 per week). We don’t know where to turn with everything, apparently according to our Solicitors we are at appeal very shortly hopefully to prove the IMA put in place was an illegal and immoral action by the CSA.

Although I can honestly say I’ve never understood anything that’s gone on with the CSA or how the management of our case has gone, we have been told numerous times that we don’t need to know as we weren’t there Clients we couldn’t have reassessment of circumstances because we weren’t the parent making application also that we could have re-assessment but would have to pay £90 for a re-assessment of circumstances which we have never being able to afford because of the position the CSA leave us in! Speaking for myself I can state that if it wasn’t for my 3 children I would have given up on life a long time ago, as I cannot see anyway out of the situation we are in my partner however remains optimistic that once were are at appeal it will be sorted.

I can totally understand how people can be pushed totally to the edge of insanity and driven to take their own lives over this Agency.

I’m sorry this account seems a little disjointed, I have sat here in despair typing trying to make an account of matters, and this is just some of things that have happened in the last 18/19 years.