CSA questions as income increases and we buy property

September 12, 2017

Hello,

My husband has an open case with the CSA from his ex, who has spent the last 7 years hiding his son from us and using every single tactic she can think of. We managed to take her to court and get orders for contact but she just waits and few months and moves house without telling us. Every time we report her, she lies about why she moved. Its a nightmare. She has moved and hidden him (she’s single and in casual relationships so she just ups sticks and moves randomly) 4 times now. Sometimes we spend months tracing her. We traced her recently having lost her again – we started action and we were finally getting somewhere when she made false allegations that we had attempted to drown our son. All this time, she happily takes hundreds of pounds a month and gloats that she spends it on nights out and at one point, she was dating some bloke and she kept laughing at us and saying they were using the money to get married and go on holiday.

So, we have some worries. We work extremely hard and I have spent the last 7 years studying to be a doctor, my husband started a company and it has been going for 4 years this year. The problem is, the more we earn, the more she wants. Even when we pay every month, she asks for recalculations and more and more money.

My husband is due a payrise and we daren’t give him one because they’ll take a load more money. We are preparing to buy a house and we are now bricking it incase she can try to take it or want half of it because his son is still under 18 year old.

In hindsight, do you think that we should hold off buying a house until he is 18 years old? Similarly, should we keep my husband’s salary lower until he is 18 too? Or is there a way around this? What if i just buy the house in my name? What if we move abroad and buy in Aus or Canada?

We wouldnt mind paying CSA but she wont let us see him and whenever we have found him, he looks terrible and she looks a million dollars with a brand new car. She is very clearly spending our money on herself whilst he is in tesco trackies and £5 trainers. We ask the CSA for proof that she spends it on our son and they say we are not entitled to that. We made a complaint to social services after she made the false allegations against us and explained that this whole thing is tactics and we are worried that our money isnt looking after him and he has virtually nothing but they refused to look into it. They also refused to take any action against her even when our son and her admitted that we never tried to drown him and she made it up.

We just feel stuck. We are young with two children ourselves. Our kids are 7 and 9 years old. Weve been married 8 years. I earn around £70k and my husband earns around £25k. I’m also worried that she will be able to get hold of my earnings under the new proposed law on partners wages for CSA. We dont have any CSA arrears.

Does anyone have any advice for us at all?

(slightly off topic, but are there any decent orgs or activist groups that look at how we can reform the CSA to stop the bullying? My dad was taken to the cleaners and lost his house over the CSA because my mum lied to them – i had evidence she had lied because i was 14 but they wouldnt listen to me because i was a child. My Dad’s best friend had his savings account cleared of £21k one day when i was about 16 (2006) – the CSA terrifies me. I am also entitled to CSA from an ex but i dont claim it because i dont want it. What can we do to reform?)

Comments

  • David says:

    Wow, a lot going on there and not at all surprising.

    Could you please drop me a line at [email protected] urgently?

    Kind regards
    David

  • Skye says:

    Hi,

    I have had the same thoughts and empathize entirely,

    Please contact me [email protected]

  • >