Is there any way we can make these payments fairer?

August 26, 2014

Hi, I am looking for a bit of advice from anyone with some CSA knowledge.

My partner has a child with a women he had a one night stand with 15 years ago. To cut a very long story short she made his life miserable and pretty much every year demanded his accounts were looked over by the CSA (he is self employed so she never wanted to miss any possible rises she could get). He had asked her for a number of years if they could come to a private agreement as the yearly CSA hounding was getting to much. She refused.

However in 2010 she contacted him saying she realised she had been out of order and wanted to set up a private agreement. By this point he had been hit bad by the recession but she wanted the highest figure possible. They finally settled on a very high figure (that worked out to be about 25% of his salary).

Anyway him and i met in 2011 and he told me all about the women and his son, just to make it clear he has had no contact with the child ever. By 2013 his income was still reducing and his payments are now amounting to 49% of his salary. I was having a look on google and finally found the women and we have now discovered that in 2010 she was in-fact moving abroad to be with her new partner who is funding a rather lavish lifestyle for her and her son and she is also now in full time employment.

My partner took the decision this year to contact her and ask if he can reduce payments down to 15% of his salary per CSA guidelines explaining the drop in income and how she is now getting close to 60% of his income etc etc. But as of now she has not replied to his email. We are now thinking she will just ignore all his correspondence and hold on to the larger payment for as long as possible.

So my question is, the only option we have is to go back to the CSA and ask them to step in (the CSA was the only get out claus my partner had to the private agreement) but will they have any jurisdiction now she lives abroad or are we now trapped and waiting for him to leave school? (another issue as we don’t know if she will ever tell us when he leaves school).

Sorry for such a long story but i am just unsure my self and was hoping someone might know the answer. Please appreciate my partner has done everything this women has asked for over the last 15 years including surviving on a very small income so as to not upset her and ask for the payments to be reduced. He isn’t trying to avoid paying he just wants the payments to be fairer.

Comments

  • Lisa says:

    Is the child his proven by DNA? If not why not? Secondly if she lives abroad he owes the woman nothing his liability ends

  • Joanne says:

    The child is his proven by DNA when she first came to find him wanting money. She refused to have a test at first claiming he was causing her stress by suggesting she had other sexual partners.

    So if she lives abroad he shouldn’t be paying, i would have thought it didn’t matter? This is really interesting thank you.

  • Joanne says:

    Sorry but the csa didn’t decide the payments and he doesn’t pay through the CSA it’s a private arrangement. We were hoping that getting the CSA involved would help reduce the payments. But do they have any authority if the child no longer lives in the UK?

  • Bill says:

    When the PWC or the NRP are no longer in the UK they are beyond the jurisdiction of the CMS (CSA as was).
    If he has a private agreement and she will not communicate then he can reduce his payments to an appropriate level. No doubt communication will commence.
    CMS will not open a case if one of the parties is resident abroad.
    Child Maintenance Options should be able to advise with more authority.

  • Joanne says:

    Thank you everyone for the comments, my partner has spoken to the CSA and weirdly the girl on the other end of the phone seemed delighted to tell him he should not be paying anything.

    She is going to instruct an assessment which should cancel the private agreement. If he makes any changes to the dd amount she has the power to have his accounts arrested she had all this written into the private agreement. Seeing a solicitor soon so there might be some fair outcome in the end, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

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