The CSA won’t overturn their decision to reduce payments

October 17, 2013

Slightly different situation for me. My ex has a new partner with a young child, in August she changed the address she receives his child benefit at to my ex’s. In turn he pays a reduced amount of maintenance for our daughter, as this is the check the CSA has in place to validate financial responsibility for an additional child.

He is now renovating his house, the work has been going on for almost 3 months so far and he’s probably claiming a council tax exemption for that as it’s technically uninhabitable. Meanwhile he’s staying with his partner in the property her ex is paying for – I suspect without declaring that to the council either, otherwise why did she change the address she receives child benefit to? They’re effectively residing together there, which would tick the responsibility for her child box.

The way they’ve done it, he gets a council tax exemption and pays reduced maintenance, and she still gets a council tax discount for “living alone”.

Only a relatively short term thing as I understand they will share the same main residence (his) by the end of the year. But the CSA won’t overturn their decision to reduce maintenance payments in the interim as rhey’ve done their part to validate the information they’ve been given.

This having had to go to the CSA for maintenance in the first place. I made an offer to my ex to bring payments up to date and pay £x a month moving forward otherwise I’d go to the CSA. He declined and their calculation was then about £40 a month more. At the same time I made a variation appeal, knowing he had assets/savings over the £65k threshold, and hoping to recover some of the maintenance I didn’t get in the first year (my fault for not asking the CSA sooner to collect maintenance and instead trying to agree this with him as “maintenance direct” – they can only recover amounts from the time you instruct them to collect maintenance on your behalf. This wasn’t made clear to me when I opened the case). The variation appeal, which was simply to calculate the actual amount of maintenance our daughter was entitled to based on his income, assets and savings in their entirety, failed as the onus was on me to prove the assets/savings that existed, which I couldn’t – what I could prove was app. £2k short of the trigger amount…I didn’t bother to pursue this any further).

So, i’m following the current issue up as a matter of principle (the CSA gave me a number for HMRC, and I’ll probably report it to the council their properties are in too), but not holding my breath!

Comments

  • john says:

    the nerve of you sneaky obese hangers on, no wonder you are on your own and he has found a new partner. WHO are you thinking you are exactly the police! you are committing a criminal offence “causing alarm and distress” is harassment, my advice to him is to get an injunction out against you now and force you to keep your dirty sponging fucked up ass the fuck away from his life for good.
    just because you can’t find a new man you decide to stalk your ex go and do the world a favour and jump under a train you fucking animal.

  • Matt says:

    OMG how the hell do you know all this stuff about your ex. My advice to you – forget the ex he doesn’t love you any more. Maybe not been so obsessed with him might give you the time to focus on your own life?

  • Richie says:

    Selfish money grabbing and jealous of the ex …. sad really!

  • Mr.Whitey says:

    Borders on obsession…

  • Lisa says:

    Seems the poster just can’t move on, money talks doesn’t it, maybe if you put the effort into your child that you do into stalking your ex and his partner you wouldn’t go far wrong, desperate springs to mind

  • M says:

    I know all of this because my daughter tells me. Absolutely no stalking involved. She finds it pretty upsetting, knowing things have been a struggle for us – particularly in the 11 months she didn’t see a penny in maintenance after we left.

    But, she of course loves her dad and has very regular contact with him – always has and, I hope, always will.

    My daughter is absolutely my number 1 priority and it’s important to me to bring her up with a sense of what’s right and wrong. To me, lying about your personal circumstances to reduce the amount of support you give to your child is wrong.

    The point of my post is the CSA seems to be powerless to do anything about it….and there will be people in the same or similar situations, much longer term, that will be crippled by it…..that’s wrong too.

  • M says:

    Thanks for your comments, I get how this sounds.

    But actually I know all this because my daughter tells me. Absolutely no stalking involved. She finds it pretty upsetting, knowing things have been a struggle for us – particularly in the 11 months she didn’t see a penny in maintenance after we left.

    But, of course she loves her dad and has very regular contact with him….always has and, I hope, always will.

    She’s absolutely my number 1 priority – and it’s important to me we bring her up wth a sense of what’s right and wrong. To me, lying about your circumstances to pay less support to your child, is wrong.

    And the point of the post, the CSA seems powerless to do anything about it. Other people will be in the same (or at least similar) situations over a longer period of time and will be crippled by it. And that’s wrong too.

  • Lisa says:

    Why not speak to your ex and ask him what he can afford, the CSA are actually pushing parents to have their own agreements before they will now get involved, some people use the CSA as a weapon or to get so much more money by lying about how much they have actually had, we got an arrears bill from CSA and thank god now the ex,a lies have finally been seen thru, it’s ok saying you haven’t had any m

  • Lisa says:

    Money you also have to prove it

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