CSA say I owe more than I do, can I appeal decision?

January 31, 2016

So I have received a letter from the CSA demanding payment of £1814 from underpayment from 1st may 2015 till 1st jan 2016. I have made regular payments to the child’s mother on each o these months and to my calculation have actually underpaid by £370.

I spoke to the CSA and they have told me this underpayment is based on the information fromy last tax year where I had a well paid job but from January 2015 till may 2015 I was unemployed then from may I was in employment on a lesser wage. Upon contacting the CSA they have expressed that this is my fault for not informin them of my change of circumstances and therefore based payments on my previous job salary and have also expressed that I have no right to appeal this.

Does this seem fair that I have to pay £389 a month instead of the £210 I have been payin because me and the child’s mother had an agreement and she full well knows I was not on this salery for the past 8 months and seems to persist in the demand for £1800 when in fact it’s calculated on my current earnings I actually owe £370.

Can I appeal this decision of them having the wrong salary for me even though I did not inform them?

I need some advice please.

CSA demanding thousands for child I’m not allowed to acknowledge

January 30, 2016

I was with a girl for about 6 weeks 12 years ago. She fell pregnant and she decided that she was going to terminate the pregnancy. This felt wrong, but her choice.

On her final meeting with the docs before going for the operation she changed her mind.

She said and I quote “I’m having this baby for me, and I want you to have nothing to do with it ever.”

As she then moved away without so much as a by your leave I had no way of contacting her at the time, and no idea where she had gone.

I heard nothing for 5 years.

Then the csa came in with their jack boots on.

They decided that I owed alot of money. To this attachments of earnings were applied and 40% of my gross income was being taken from my earnings.

This put me out of work.

I tried working again, same result. I have never seen this child, I have never had any contact with the mother since day 1. This is now 11 years on.

I asked from day 1 for a dna test and the csa wanted me to pay £700 for it, because after they took 40% of my wage I had that left over.

Now I am finally getting that done in the morning, I reckon it’s mine, but I have had zero contact in 11 years, she is married with another child, I’m married and my wife and I can’t have kids, and the csa have sent me a demand for over 15k.

Where are my rights in this??? Where is my justice??

It was her choice to have this child, her choice to not want me there, what can I do??

I suppose hiring mafia hitmen is out of the question. So what else??

CSA interfered with our private arrangement

January 29, 2016

Long story…..

Started paying child support for son & daughter through CSA as ex wife would not agree to a resolution, she returned to her home town so had to pay her out the equity and take a mortgage extension, and was left with a car (to get to work, so i could pay her) and a knife & fork (literally).

I paid for their holidays, shoes, haircuts, clothes and treats on top, some might say so what this is expected. I am just trying to set the scene. I made a round trip of 200 miles each weekend for the first 7 years to have them at weekends and did not ask this to be taken into account for payment calculations.

I then moved abroad to a country with no reciprocal CSA payment arrangements, therefore by law I was not olbiged to pay anything, but i continued payments for 3 years. After that my son came to live with us for over 2 years and i did not ask for any money in return.

Upon returning to the UK and son going back to mother to live, i asked her what she wanted as payment, finally this time we agreed a figure which i duly paid, as well as extras. I had a good job for 6 months and 5 years later the CSA are telling me i now owe £6,000 back pay for those 6 months on top of what i paid.

I assumed if we agreed a payment the CSA would not interfere? I also foolishly never got the ex wife to put anything in writing that we had agreed a payment schedule. Therefore it is my word against hers that we had an arrangement, i had a letter six months ago threatening court action and asked the CSA to resolve whether ex had agreed to schedule, now i understand the CSA have lodged a payment order with the court. I have had to pay a nominal monthly amount just to keep the bailiffs away. The CSA have been ruthless in their pursuit with never addressing anything i ask of them nor responding to calls or letters.

My advice is get EVERYTHING in writing, no matter how small, even if it is an amicable seperation, it will come back to haunt you. NEVER phone the CSA, only deal in letters so you have proof of date. COPY everything you send. DEMAND your case file notes under FOI. LOSE that trust you have, mine has gone for ever.

FINALLY and this is the most important, NEVER, EVER believe your sposue if they tell you they are using contraception, mine twice stopped taking the pill without telling me. NEVER trust their word, always use your own protection methods. I know at least 4 other friends who have had children this way.

Will CSA nightmare continue with CMS?

January 28, 2016

My nightmare started with csa wen i hadnt heard from the mother of my child for years then out of the blue i had an attachment of earnings applied! £300 plus taken a week out of my wages this was in 2008 apparently this was arrears and maintenance together this was breaking me to the point i had no choice but to move out of my family home as i coouldnt afford financially to support my wife and other child! and her daugher dont get me wrong i never had a problem with paying for my child but i was stopped seeing her for no reason! but the amount they took was rediculous!

my wife would be on the phone to csa everyday trying to come to some arrangement but them nit wanting to hear anything we had to say! ie that i had to move out and my wife had to go on benifits so be able to keep a roof over her and her childrens head their attitude was as long as the mother of his other child is gettin her money thats all that matters and if my wife  wanted she could also claim for the child we had together!! oviously we werent seperated so she didnt want to go down that road.

she then had a income support officer come round and my wife nearly done for fraud because she was on benifits and still married and with me my explained everything showed wage slips etc and luckily they didnt take it further!

csa nearly ripped my family apart we had no say we where spoken to like dogs and no one would give us the time off day!! 3 years we went through this hell,4 years we have had a set payment plan which we have the amount csa said we have to pay come out weekly which has worked brilliantly.

We have now been informed that the old csa is shutting down and that a new system and claim has to be made! i have rung them and tried to explain our situation to end up with no information we needed! we have been told we have 3 ways ro set uo csa one of them is the route we want to go down and that is through the mother but hse wont communicate with us after we have messaged her we cant afford to go through the csa as i cant afford the fees as well as the maintenance! and i dint want to go through csa i just dont wat to do? do we have more of a say this time with the new system?

CSA made a mistake so naturally I owe them thousands

January 27, 2016

I’ve just been told by cas that I owe nearly 2700 rears going back over 15 years this came from when there made over payment to one of my ex partners of £995  and looked back in to my history so there now say I hve to pay £1700 back plus the rears that was meant to go to my other partner so because they messed up I have to pay in also had to pay rears back after i left the army as cas said i wasn’t paying what i should but never did anything while i was in the army so why didn’t there say anything about this other rears so ive been paying whats i had to until there messed up and now i owe them more money.

CMS on my case as ex denying payment even though I can prove it

January 26, 2016

I started paying CM to my ex at a rate of £25 a week, I am on a very low income, despite not having to.  Then I received a letter from the CMS saying I needed to pay £65 a week. Then they revised it to £19 a week. And the whole time I was paying £25 a week.  Next I get hit for non payment, despite still paying then I get threatened with court.  So I contacted them and presented evidence to show I had been paying it and that my ex had been spending it.  I have now been told because my ex has denied I have paid it, because it went into a joint account and even though I have not spent a penny from that account I am liable to pay the whole amount again.  I have paid just under a thousand pounds and they want another thousand.  I don’t know what to do I can’t afford to live now.  Please help.

Do I have to pay CSA even though I had my kids before it was invented?

January 22, 2016

i was 16 going on 17 when i had my first child, i was not aware of csa then i also had another child a year later in 1988, the CSA was not even invented when i had my children, do i have to pay CSA, as one child is 31 and  the other is 28 were do i stand as i have been paying these people 3.000 for the last 17 years were do i stand as im desperate to stop and i dont now were to turn next suicide will be the next step i can see it can anybody advise me please.

We all need to stand up to the CSA!

January 21, 2016

What a great site – I wish I had known of it sooner! Reading many of the stories here mine just echoes so many of them.

Unfortunately the CSA make everything so much more complicated and convoluted than it ever needs to be, so there is never a ‘short’ way to recount dealings with them:

Divorced in 2006 the CSA were on my case right away. There was never going to be any chance that I wouldn’t care for and support my children, the divorce wasn’t their fault, but the CSA have always treated me like a stereotypical absent father. I have a pile of documents that measure about 13″ high from all the wranglings that have gone on, and when you consider my personal/financial circumstances have changed only once in the past 10 years, it beggars belief how they can make so many errors. I get re-calculations through for no reason – I even have two sent on the same day, dated by the same sender the same day, with totally different calculations on. The latest farce is due to their incompetence and an error by my bank, I was not made aware that for SIX YEARS I was paying every month instead of every 4 weeks. That accrued an annual deficit of one months payments. Despite having many problems with them throughout that time and countless conversations and letters, not once did they ever bring that to my attention. The phoned me in the middle of the working day around July 2014 and were so aggressive, it was like having a bailiff on your doorstep! Telling them it wasn’t a convenient time to drop a bombshell like £1000 of arrears just made no difference, they insisted I pay it immediately and without any question or proof. Due to some other agreements between my ex-wife and I, it was agreed that these ‘arrears’ be struck off, and on that understanding I have never paid anything towards them. Now I find that over the course of these last 20 months since then, the arrears now only total £111. Now some might say, ‘great, don’t complain’, but its not as simple as that. As I have always believed, there is something sinister about this – I have only ever paid what the CSA have told me to pay and never knowingly missed a payment. What sort of accounting goes on in this place where they can ‘fiddle’ the numbers so that I pay what they ask for, and in the background they can manipulate the books to write off arrears? Regardless of who wines or loses, its not transparent and its fraudulent surely?

This is just the tip of the 10-year long iceberg and I could sit and type all day about my anger and frustrations with the CSA. My initial complaint over their creative accounting went into them in July last year. I am now at stage 2 of their formal complaints procedure but ironically having been unemployed for nearly 4 months all went quiet from them (nothing in it for them I guess). I advised them verbally back in November that I was back at work from Jan 4th and still heard nothing (typical). This second stage complaint included another reminder of being back at work as I didn’t want this to create problems later on and I want to make sure my children are ok. Suddenly I am their new focus again, but a call from them at 7pm last night where they nonchalantly said I could give them my employment details over the phone was met with a curt ‘no’ from me. On principle, they have had 7 months to respond properly to my query and all I get is meaningless waffle and non-sensical, unintelligent crap back. Its time to stand up and make a point. 10 years of trouble. 10 years of letter after letter after letter, and call upon call – getting nowhere, CSA departments admit they don’t talk to eachother and assessments have no details of any complaints the senior team are working on – what on earth!?

I have stated that I will happily provide them all the details they need, I’m not going anywhere and I want to get this sorted, but not until they can provide clear and accurate accounts of payments and calculations, that isn’t much to ask.

I would like to add here that reading others’ accounts I am just as angry at those absent parents who shun their responsibilities and leave parents with care high and dry – what are the CSA doing about those people?! It seems to me they go for the ‘easy kill’ every time. If you are a full-time employee you are easy to deal with. Anything more trying like a query or an absent self-employed, responsibility-avoidant parent, that’s too complicated and they aren’t intelligent enough or trained to deal with that sort of thing. “CSA” is a misnomer, they have no concern about the welfare of the children at all, and I have even had their representatives tell me that quite proudly.

The only way for action and reform is to apply pressure at its source, via government. At one stage I felt I was totally alone in all this; isolated and making a fuss about issues that seemed to only apply to me. However this is clearly a very widespread problem and we need to bring all the voices together to bring it into focus. I have written to my local MP in Fareham, Hants and I hound her all the time on it. Ironically I think even they are at their witts’ end with it but that’s just not good enough, someone has to do something.

So I urge everyone to follow up every case they have and write to their MP. Google who they are. Be direct, non-aggressive but firm and keep it succinct but do it. Enough noise made at a local level will have to come out  somewhere higher up.

In the meantime as I await the written demand for my own personal work information, I have zero faith in the calculation being right, and whatever happens always sit awaiting the next brown envelope dropping through the door to tell me “Regrettably, there was an error made some 3 years ago and you now owe…blah blah blah…”.

Roll on when my youngest starts work and I’ll be popping the champagne!

CSA are essentially stealing maintenance payments

January 20, 2016

After a big admin error in 2013/2014 I was told that I owed CSA 23,000 despite only receiving payments that I was scheduled to receive and that had been taken from my ex husband.  I am parent with care with 4 kids.  Anyway, after a year of upset and hardship, 3 appeals and an independent enquiry I was given £150.00 in compensation from CSA and the slate was wiped clean.  They had broken their own rules /policy and it was proven that it was their admin error.

Now they have done it again!!  They are taking 530 a month direct from my ex husband’s salary and refusing to pay it to me.  They say I owe them money but Ive received no explanation, no letter and I have only received 530 a month since the new schedule started.  It cannot be possible that I owe them money.  They are effectively stealing the money now as they are taking money directly from my ex husband and have not paid me a penny since the beginning of December last year.  How can this be legal ????

CSA won’t enforce my ex’s DEO

January 19, 2016

Where do I start? My ex walked out whist I was pregnant with my first child. Refused to have anything to do with us. Soon as son was born, CSA were involved. He went on Sick pay. He has spent the last 13 years jumping from job to job, benefits, even trying to create his own business with his dodgy best mate accountant to cook his books to avoid assessment and payment. He transfers all of his assets including house to his fiance to avoid charges etc.

The CSA have been appalling but that’s because they have let me down. He has been in employment for last 5 years. There has been a DEO in place with his employer for over a year now which took many years to action as they kept giving my ex the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact he just doesn’t pay! His employer has gotten away with paying less than a 5th of the regular maintenance every week. I have had to fight constantly with the CSA for them to take action. Still, they have not been to his employer and threatened any kind of legal action.

I get £10 a week! Prior to this was lucky if I got £5. Some years I got zero!! The money I do get is inconsistent and unreliable. Most of my arrears are with enforcement who have had these liability orders since 2010 – not one penny has been collected!

The battle still goes on and he continues to keep changing his circumstances then being non-compliant. The last change took the CSA over 5 months – in the meantime, they say they can’t enforce any collections. 5 months and the assessment came back the same because his earnings had changed by less than 5%!

In the 11 years I got between nothing and £5 a week I brought my son up alone, working full time. Childcare costs were £400-£500 a month, not to mention nappies, formula etc – now it’s adult size trainers, hair cuts, school uniform and trips – NO Birthday or Christmas presents! Was £20 a month really going to help (and to quote some peoples comments) this “greedy ex who just wants more money???” And before you start down the tax credit route, I didn’t get enough to cover even half my childcare! And yes, I had mortgage and bills – and no I didn’t have a new partner to share the costs!!

15% of anyone’s net pay is not a fortune. Children cost WAY more than that!

The DEO is a last resort and the CSA do not do what they like as they keep telling me – they have rules and regs they have to follow. The DEO is place with my ex still fails to collect the amount due even after a year!!

I am hoping that when I eventually go onto the new Child Maintenance Service, things will improve!

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