Ex claimed he wasn’t working, but I saw him on TV

I have a 7 year old boy, I split from his father when he was just 9 months old. Originally we had a private payment agreement. However, my ex partner became increasingly demanding and sometimes threatening and violent towards me. He would often use money as a form of blackmail so that he could gain control over me.

So I contacted the CSA to help me make structured payments that required no further contact. At first it seemed fine, he paid on time and seemed happy too. When I met a new parter things suddenly changed. My ex started to question where his money was going and stopped the payments. The CSA started to put out letters and warned him of the actions that they would take. However, this was not carried through.

Eventually I stopped contact with my son and his father…I know this seems extream, but I was a single mother still and felt that the CSA were not doing enough to make him want to pay.

The CSA then used a deductions of earning order for his employers. At first this worked a treat, and I started to get regular payments for at least 4 months. Then it suddenly stopped again. I was told by the CSA that his employers were very rude to them on the phone. The CSA representative said they could issue the employers with a fine…this never happened. Instead my ex found a loop hole in stating that he was ‘self employed’ which meant that he would only have to pay £5 per week for a six month period while his new buisness was set up. There was no new buisness!! He still failed to pay the minimum of £5. A liability order for £2000 was issued in September 2010, and bailliffs were asked to attend his property. There have now been three failed attempts over the course of a year.

The third attempt was at my request when a birthday card for my son was sent with a return address attached (which was the same address that they had priviously failed to access on two seperate occations). I have just phoned up to find out the progress on the case. The security questions that were put forward to me were very frustrating and highly inappropriate. I was asked what date I last made a phone call to them…I don’t make a mental note of things like that and got it wrong.

So in a sense I failed the security test, but I expressed my disproval of such a question and when I told him the nature of the last conversation he allowed me to pass the security test. I was already rather stressed by this point. I have now been told that the arrears stand at £6000. I have to wait a further month for my case to be passed back from the bailliffs. He has told me that my ex partner could have his driving licence removed…he doesn’t have one. I was then told that he could now face a court case and possible imprisonment for 41 days, but that this could take a long time.

The most interesting point is that as I was watching channel 5 on the TV the other day a programme called the ‘Hotel Inspector’ was on, they were at a hotel in Maidstone…the very same hotel and resturant that my ex partner was working at a few years ago, and the same hotel that refused to carry out the deductions of earning order. Low and behold my ex partner pops on screen…he is the head chef there.

I told this to the CSA and asked why it is so difficult to locate him when he is still working at the same hotel that he was a few years ago? The CSA representative went rather quite, and then told me that if he did phone there he would have to state that he was from the CSA and the chances are he wouldn’t take the call. This leads me to my point, do they have CSA representatives that leave the confines of their office to actually deal with these cases on a personal one to one level? It feels that these cases are all just listed on a system and hanging on a telephone.

These children are being forgotten, and the point is that if you help to create a child then it is only fair that both parents make a contribution to that childs life.

It seems to me, that it is very easy to fool this so called system. I know I am not alone, and I feel that there is no justice for these forgotten children. More to the point. the longer it takes the CSA to pin point the whereabouts of these absent parents, the higher the arrears, and this then becomes an unrealistic option that they should have to repay such large abouts of money. The system is clearly failing.