We use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. We do this to improve browsing experience and to show (non-) personalised ads. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Loading ...
It would be alot fairer if the CSA didn’t take into account the tax credits given to 2nd families.The person with care claims these anyway,so why should we be giving our credits away as well.We recieve child and working tax and say goodbye every week to our working tax,which is given to the ex,,,,WHY?
Agreed with Alice, and nrp new partner left out of it, or include pwcs partners income aswel, also before assessments take place make sure man is the father, mine just found out he isn’t now the boy is 24 and paying maintenance and giving ex the house!
Impartiality would be a good start. In my experience they always believe the mother over the father. It ‘s always up to him to prove everything whilst she just sits back and waits for the money to come in.
Their new multi million pound computer system must have been made by Amstrad because it still can’t validate if Child Benefit is in payment. (Apparently They Have To Send A Form Off Requesting The Information, So That Needs Upgrading Again!)
The current so called Management and ex call centre Staff should be fired and replaced with more competent and better educated people.
i think its about time the csa were given the power to tell single mums if they want money from absent fathers then the fathers must have access to the children women seem to have it their way in everyway not all of us are absent by choice
Close the CSA in its’ present form and refer personal matters involving parents and children to mediation centres, where all the issues involving children and parents can be discussed. Maintenance, Access, and Benefits.
Then draw up a contract whereby each parent agrees to stick with their side of that contract, with penalties if they do not. This way the children are provided for and any breaches by the parents are addressed.
The compliant father is then not being criminalised and the compliant mother receives her maintenance in a fair and balanced way.
If irresponsible fathers/mothers do not participate with the scheme, refer the case to an enforcement agency for assessment and as a last resort punitive measures. 3 strikes and it’s enforcement only!
Never going to be perfect, but it would be a start!
ONLY the parents of the children should be involved with ANY of this!!! ALL the income BOTH parents have should be considered, including family allowance and working tax credits as this is disposable income that will be available to spend in that household!!
Expenditure of BOTH parents should be considered too!! It should be assumed that where there is two adults sharing, each pay 50% and where a parent is living alone, they have 100% expenditure so whether you are a NRP or PWC your FACTUAL living expenses are taken into account!! Whatever the NRP has left each month should then be assessed for child support!!
BOTH parents need to have disposable income to survive and BOTH parents WILL spend money when the kids are with them…..
Mothers should not be allowed to reduce the ‘overnight’ stays with the fathers in an attempt to get more money. Amount of ‘time’ NOT overnight stays should be considered in the during the initial assessment and if either parent cancel, the reason for cancelling (and the amount of times cancelled) should be recorded and either parent financially penilised. This would stop the mother playing games with the father by using the children and the CSA!! It would also mean that fathers would be penilised for messing their kids around and not being committed to their kids!
Both parents should submit expenses for their children each month to verify what they are spending money on with/for the kids!
This is about the welfare of kids….. our kids!!!
It still baffles me why so many people think there will someday be a “fairer” CSA. You all seem to forget that it doesn’t exist to help the PWC or the child, it exists in order to claw back as much of the benefits paid to the PWC as possible! That is it’s sole purpose and they can be as ruthless and uncaring as they like as it’s run by the government and hence why there’s no regulatory body to govern it’s standards and practices.
Had enough of the csa constant mithering although ive only missed two payments in about six years. Does anyony know exactly where all my money goes . The system is not fair as I know my money will not be fully spent on my child which I was stopped from seeing for no reason then received the letter from the csa one day.
Accountability and a fairer payment sytstme are an absolute must. I pay £300 per month to my ex. I pay a further £300 a month on debts accumulated with her but which were not to do with the home. I then pay £330 per month to commute to work. That’s nearly a £1000 before I pay rent, bills, car costs etc. Do the CSA care about this…. NO. My ex recently asked me for more money and one week later drops my son off in a brand new £50k range rover. Her and her new partner a extremely well off yet the CSA will not look at both sides. They will also get to know exactly how much I earn for the next 12-14 years. Am I allowed to see their incomes over this period? £300 per month is the differnece between paying a pention and saving money and not at the moment. My ex made this decision when my son was only 2 so this is going to effect me for a substatial amount of time. Do get me wrong, I am all for paying for my son but it is all to easy for the mother to call it a day and get paid off for it. If my son lived with me it would not cost me £300 per month to support him. In a few years time my salary is likely to increase substantially. Why if the PWC can more than manage off of £300 per month (and have a very good lifestyle) should I then pay more! The whole system makes me so angry!
Well in that case my husbands ex wife would be entitled to absolutely zero !!!!! if both parties are taken into consideration.
That would be a fair system, because i don’t see why i should have to pay for two kids that arn’t mine, considering i also have a child of my own and because of this shambolic system my daughter unfortunately is denied a lot !!!!!
She apparently the pwc and us the nrp although i have a child have to give her our blood practically, whilst her partner earns in gross over £55 grand per anum and her massive amount of benefits she receives per month !!!! on top of that my husbands huge child maintenance bill, she must be grossing per month £2.5 grand a month, now how on earth is that a fair system!
Bring it on the sooner the better, while she milks every benefit agency going including the appauling CSA and lives off her partner, i think to date she’s had a bout 4 holidays this year and it’s only July.
I’m so angry abouth the whole system it really needs a massive overhaul and soon.
Apparently called Child Support Agency. Immediately the CSA become bias, rude and come across as incompetent. Different day was a different answer with them making them ambiguous, poor people skills and management staff could be easily confused as being on work experience. What’s worse is they’re paid by the taxpayer! Us! Where do we stand? Petition? Movement?
I pay 250 monthly and approximately 200 goes on the ex’s wardrobe and social life and the rest to my son. Child Support Agency? What child support?
Mediation is the way forward with a third neutral party to come to realistic decisions , the prerogative is the child not the mothers well being.
I am very more than willing to make a stand providing I get the support to show this corruption and joke of an agency. Why put with an agency that relishes on acrimon?
shut them down, sack them all and put the whole thing back into the family courts where it belongs.
hear! hear to that one j 🙂 only in our dreams though because the government makes too much money from the victims of the CSA system….
Sally on September 11th, 2012 3:13 pm
hear! hear to that one j only in our dreams though because the government makes too much money from the victims of the CSA system….
You are right there, still we live in hope! Good luck with your own battles. If it was your blog earlier then well said.
Make the calculation much fairer and ‘realistic’ (include a percentage of NRP’s living expenses (mortgage/rent etc). Turn the ‘cash’ payments into a ‘credit/voucher’ scheme so that the money can ONLY be spent on children’s clothing, food etc. It is after all meant to ‘support the child’. Whether such a scheme is actually workable/viable or not is another matter. If it were, it would at least ‘control’ how the money is spent and ensure it’s more likely to ‘benefit/support’ the child in the right way, NOT benefit the PWC. On that note…My ex wife uses my money to fund holidays, personal cosmetic and home improvements for her and her new partner. (Not being bitter etc, it’s actually true in my case)! They do however take my daughters with them on holiday, although they make them pay a big chunk of money towards the holiday out of the small amount of money they earn from their part-time jobs! When they were younger, my daughters used to ask me why I never took them on holiday?!! How can you explain to a young child that you can’t take them on holiday because any spare money you have is being given to their mother which effectively is paying for them to go on holiday with her instead?!!
My daughters are more grown up now (nearly 18) and have just told me that their mother ‘forced’ (and is still forcing/bullying them) to go to college in order to ensure I still have to make the CSA payments. She has told them that if they don’t ensure they get into college (and remain in college until they are 19) then I will stop paying the money to her and so she won’t be able to afford to buy them food etc, so they will have to pay her a weekly rent of £40 out of their part time job salary instead!! And they only earn £45 per week! In my view, that’s emotional blackmail in order to keep lining her pocket from my wages for as long as she can. At least my daughters are old enough now to see what she is doing for themselves!
What’s ultimately wrong is that the CSA ‘allow’ this to happen. The CSA even handily include a calculator on their website to allow and ‘encourage’ PWCs to see how much more money they can get through the grossly unfair and unjust system, as opposed to their current and fair court order agreement. That’s like throwing a peice of yummy bait on a hook to a school of daft fish with no brains! So they then apply to the CSA because the extra money (even if unjust) is simply irresistible. The NRP is then consequently approached by the CSA in an ‘aggressive’ manner (having done nothing wrong by keeping to the original court order maintenance agreement) and the court order is effectively ‘ripped up’. Now you are in ‘the system from hell’ and there’s NO ESCAPE, despite having a legal court order agreement in place prior to the CSA getting involved. Why bother with courts if the CSA staff have the ‘power’ to do what ever they want?!
JUST TO FINISH OFF:
In the majority of cases (but ok not all), it is the PWC who is clearly the one who’s benefiting from the money…NOT the children. The CSA should be renamed as part of the new Gross income assessment change which is about to be launched. It should be renamed to reflect the reality of the system…it should be renamed to be be PWCSA (Parent With Care Support Agency)!
Oh and:
GOOD LUCK TO ANYONE WHO IS MOVED TO THE NEW ‘GROSSLY WRONG’ GROSS INCOME SYSTEM, which will effectively make the NRP pay a large amount of money based on money they won’t actually earn and receive (i.e. the income tax and NI that is removed from their gross pay figure). Who on earth thought that one up….it’s totally insane. By the way, I spoke to the CSA the other day and they let it slip that the new Gross Income system has been pushed back until end of December now…(it was due to be launched in October). Being in project management as a job and based on the public sector’s poor project management track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if the implementation date was pushed back even further, several times!
What change would you most like to see from the CSA?
Are we allowed to say that we would most like to see them bound, gagged and lined up against a wall? Probably not but thats democracy for you.
JayW on May 28th, 2012 6:05 am
“It still baffles me why so many people think there will someday be a “fairer” CSA. You all seem to forget that it doesn’t exist to help the PWC or the child, it exists in order to claw back as much of the benefits paid to the PWC as possible! That is it’s sole purpose and they can be as ruthless and uncaring as they like as it’s run by the government and hence why there’s no regulatory body to govern it’s standards and practices.”
Well said, its just a big scam, a con, a ponzi scheme operated by the government so they have money to attck oil rich countries etc. Point is that we have already paid for those benefits in PAYE, NI and general taxation so the government have NO right to clawback anything. If we were allowed to call it theft I’d say they were “all in it together”. I’m sure there must be a human rights breach somewhere.
A full benefit disregard was introduced in April 2010, meaning a PWC on benefits kept ALL the money paid to the CSA by the NRP !
chall ~ afairercsaforall
chall on October 4th, 2012 7:44 am
“A full benefit disregard was introduced in April 2010, meaning a PWC on benefits kept ALL the money paid to the CSA by the NRP !”
chall ~ afairercsaforall
Really? Well well thank you for your ‘expert’ knowledge. Funny thing though, I was with a solicitor on Tuesday, (2nd Oct) regarding my own case. This solicitor is a csa ‘specialist’ and they told me that even if the PWC didn’t want the money the csa would still come after the NRP (albeit for a revised amount) to ‘clawback’ money for the secretary of state! In other words monies collected are NOT always paid to the PWC so the point by jayw stands. There is no such thing as a ‘fairer’ csa, its a big scam, a tax collection scheme by the government.
~ and thank you j for your usual condescending belligerence…
My post informed when the rules changed and made NO reference to ‘always’.
Perhaps the ‘csa ‘specialist’ you claim to have spoken to (02 Oct) referred to arrears that accrued PRIOR to the change in April 2010 !!
IF by chance they refer to present day, I assume your problems with the agency may be better dealt with if you found another ‘specialist’!
Quote j ‘There is no such thing as a ‘fairer’ csa’
There certainly is not, especially if one falls foul of the rules or maladministration.
It’s such a shame…whilst you bemoan a system that fails you and other’s, you make unfounded accusations or mindless insults towards other’s. The real issues and the reason why we are ALL here, then get side tracked ~ maybe time to broaden your horizons j, we’re ALL fighting the same system !!
chall ~ afairercsaforall
Chall strikes again
By the way chall ‘know it all’. I was in court the other day, spoke to the csa rep who was there, asked if I could pay my other child direct (even though I dont actually owe anything) and was told no, also told, (off the record) that my child wouldn’t get the money. So I’ll tell you what, I’ll ‘broaden my horizons’ if you get lost, go away and disappear up your own website? You have quite a reputation on this site and others, it isnt one I’d be proud of.
in september 2012 i took my daughter on holiday for one week my ex wife decided to go to spain the same week my issue is not that she went on holiday but that the csa payment for that week was given to my daughter for spending money but her mother took it to spain with her i thought the money paid was for her not her mum to buy drinks and cigs with while sat buy a pool in the sun what a great system the csa is but i no it wont stop they now want more money of me im getting to point where i will have to stop work and sighn on