I am at rock bottom, I just can’t win

My oldest daughter is 17 now, I split with her mother when she was 2 and not long after(1999) landed a decent job in a car factory and paid her £420 a month CSA deduction of earnings for nearly the whole time I worked there because she cut contact with my daughter down to 1 night a fortnight when she found out it meant she got more maintenance off me and sent my daughter to private school right from the start which was always paid for by her parents but she claimed on the CSA assessment (her aunty works at the CSA but I don’t know her name). My then present partner got pregnant with my youngest daughter and as this was after 2003 it meant that everything would assessed under the new rules of the CSA. I had already split with the youngest girls mum as we couldn’t afford to live together because her Tax Credits etc stopped when I moved in and she had a daughter already from a previous marriage, all of us just couldn’t live off what was left of my wages after the DEO and the part time job she had (I split with the oldest girls mum because she was sleeping with someone while I was working nights to support her and our daughter).

My oldest girls mum and I agreed to come out of the CSA and I would give her £200 a month direct and the youngest girls mum the same which we did for about 18 months until the redundancy’s at work came up and she got wind of the payment I would receive.

She contacted the csa and told them I hadn’t paid for nearly 2 years and the first I heard of it was when I got a bill from them saying I owed just short of £10,000 and I had a DEO for over £600 a month just for my oldest daughter as the CSA didn’t even know of my youngest. I proved her a liar as I had statements proving I had been paying money to her. We once again went back to direct pay for £200 a month which is about what she would have had under the new assessment.

In 2010, 4 years after I was made redundant and we had been direct pay all that time and I had used the redundancy as a deposit for a mortgage etc, I got a letter off the CSA saying that My oldest girls mum had contacted them and they had reopened the old case for the same amount as before when it was just my oldest on the case. I gave them all the details straight away about my new much lower paid job, the fact I had shared care of my youngest daughter and that I had a mortgage on a flat now that cost twice as much as the squalid bedsit I had before. After 3 months they finally got back to me and said the situation didn’t warrant a reassessment and due to arrears the attachment of earning was over £600 a month.

I contacted them and said how can that be when I have shared care of my youngest, a mortgage and lower wage and they told me then after 3 months after I informed them about my youngest daughter that they did not include her as they couldn’t take my word that I had shared care of her. I had to get my youngest girls mum to put in a claim against me which took months to reassess and in that time I went to the Citizens advice and even they were shocked they couldn’t do anything about this as I wasn’t even being left enough to pay my mortgage and bills let alone the legal requirement of me having £89 a month living costs( they took the full £630 a month all this time) when they had finally assessed things they agreed that I was paying too much but the law states that my oldest girls mum had to take a gradual drop in payments over 5 years and as my youngest daughter was now included they even tried to put the payment up(WTF!! she had been happily been receiving £200 a month for 6 years and it was only down to them taking 9 months to assess which is why they had me for so much for the oldest daughter). At this point I was nearly an extra £10,000 in debt as every month I was borrowing on Credit cards to pay the mortgage and the cost of my kids and car etc had lead to loans etc. After 9 months of all this, Bob Ainsworth the MP finally got involved and my payments have now come down to £250 a month for both girls but I am in that much debt now. I am now on IVA agreement which I was only able to get on by exaggerating a little to make it sound like I had more disposable income, all the other finance places I spoke to said I would not be able to afford an IVA and should go bankrupt and hand my keys back to the mortgage company.

I have been seriously depressed over all this and put on Fluoxetine by my doctor but the extra 10 a month for the prescription was crippling me so I stopped taking them ages ago. I am totally at rock bottom and due to yet another cock up by the CSA it looks like I am going to lose everything including the ability to have my daughter which makes life not worth living. I have not bought a single item of clothing in over three years, I’m in pain but can’t afford to go to the dentist and I am now at the point where I am trying to live on a £2 Morrison’s meal a day during the week when I don’t have my daughter. Because I was at risk of losing the flat which would mean the ability to have my youngest daughter, my youngest daughters mum agreed to go direct pay and to not worry about paying her until I was back on my feet a bit more( she is decent and knows I will and always have been the best father I can). This was back in October 2012 that she contacted them and for months I was told they were still working out the adjustments to the payments every time I phoned them after the full £250 was taken every month but my youngest girl mum received no money. In February or so she told me she was going to contact the csa and tell them she wanted the money again as she lost patience over it taking so long, I thought this was the case and didn’t think anything more of the CSA taking the full £250 every month. it came to light in April that she was still not receiving money off the CSA so I contacted them to see what was going on they admitted they had made a mistake and the whole £250 was being paid to my oldest girls mum since November 2012.

I was told they would stop taking money off me until the overpayment to my oldest girls mum was repaid. In may they took the full £250 so I phoned the CSA and had to explain everything again and was told I would be contacted back within 24hrs as an urgent call back, the phone call was not returned and I have been told this the countless times I have phoned up since and had to explain it all again and I have been given a different story every time from they were still taking the full amount as there might be arrears on the case to them telling me after there were no arrears when I wanted to know dates and amounts of arrears and they were unable to give me an answer to again last week when I was told there was no arrears and I would get a phone call back within 24hrs again about paying me back the overpayment of my oldest daughters mum getting my youngest daughters money for the past 6 months. My youngest daughters mum has understandably gone ballistic over the fact my oldest daughters mum who has had so much off me has been getting her money and told the csa she wants the money off me again. I phoned them Tuesday because as usual there was no call back to see if they had sorted this out yet as my payday is approaching and I was told they are working out a new attachment of earnings because of the £34000 (not a typo thirty four thousand pounds) in arrears I owe to my oldest girls mum from 2004 to 2010 when I was paying her £200 a month direct, this was rectified in 2010 when the MP got involved and I had a payment back from the CSA for the overpayment to my oldest girls mum then . I have bank statements showing I never missed a payment all that time. They are now saying she received nothing from 2004 to 2010.

I have letters dated from 2010 saying they over paid my oldest girls mum and another giving the break down of what it will be in payments (£30 a week to my oldest girls mum and £21 a week to my youngest girls mum) which has been taken be DEO ever since they paid me back the overpayment in 2010. I have found a letter dated from 2006 saying they have removed the nearly 10 thousand debt when I proved her lying then (she got 2 or 3 months at 600 by DEO during this time and had already divorced and took to the cleaners the wealthy person she was married to in 2004 when it should have been reassessed with my youngest. He had bought her a suntan shop she owned in 2004) and that we were on a maintenance direct agreement. I did inform the CSA of my youngest in 2006 but my oldest girls mum chose to go direct with them before they had reassessed and as my youngest girls mum never put a claim against me until I asked her to in 2010 I am worried.

Life is hardly worth living now and the only thing that has stopped me from doing anything drastic is the effect it would have on my youngest, she really is a daddy’s girl ( My oldest fell out with me in 2010 when I couldn’t give her mum 600 on the spot on top of what I gave her each month for a holiday my oldest wanted to go on , I gave her £150 spending money which crippled me as it was just after xmas, this was what made the youngest girls mum take to facebook and call the oldest girls mum a greedy b**ch which started all my troubles in 2010)

I am honestly at rock bottom and can’t afford to eat while the oldest girls mum who is now remarried again to a wealthy taxi firm owner, lives in 2 houses knocked into one and have 3 high end cars with private plates as well as his black cab with private plate is about to rip me off for another £34k on top of all the money she has had off me over the years but the youngest girls mum who lives in a crappy council house and lent me £40 for food last week is due nothing for the first 6 years of my youngest girls life on the same reason they say I owe the oldest girls mum £34k (not going through the CSA). I tried doing the right thing that whole time and paid them both the same amount which was 10% each of my wages, more than what should have been assessed under the new rules and I always helped on top of the monthly payments for anything my daughters needed when I could afford it after my redundancy. I really don’t know what to do now and friends and family are seriously worried, I’m pretty sure I had some sort of breakdown in 2010 when all this started again and apart from my weekends with the youngest which is about to be taken away from me life is really not worth living. I am absolutely penniless all the time and can’t even go anywhere when I have the youngest. The flat I own is 50/50 shared ownership so I can’t sublet and move somewhere cheaper and I can’t sell because of the £20000 negative equity on the place now from when I bought it in 2007. I’m over £1500 in arrears on the rent side of it from when the CSA was taking over £600 a month as well as all my other debts that can not be included in the IVA like the £350 I owe to the electric who have just increased my direct debit to double for the arrears owed, the house phone and internet are disconnected and I cant get rid of mobile as its contract and is my only means of communication now for work, phoning my daughter every day and CSA problems like this. Everything of value has been sold apart from my car which I need for work and is only worth a couple of thousand anyway. I was told by a transitional complaints resolution officer over the phone in 2010 that there was no arrears for the period they now say I owe £34000 when it was mentioned back then.

I have a letter off him saying that the period they took over 600 a month for in 2010 was reassessed and was now £37 a week which resulted in the refund in 2010 but it says nothing about arrears. Apart from a few years after I got made redundant, I have lived in absolute poverty Because of the CSA for 15 years and now this when it was not far off ending with my oldest girls mum. I am in serious need of help.