Why am I kept on an old, unjust system?

I am writing this on this forum for the first time in anger, in desperation and hope of a way out of this massive unfairness and obvious inequality of my current situation with regard to the Child Support Agency. I shall try and make this as brief as i can.

My daughter was born pre 2003, after a brief relationship with her mother. Before the separation i used most of my inheritance money from my mother’s death to pay off roughly £8000 of my partner’s debt.

On separation we established a monthly payment of £200 by mutual consent, and that I would have my child for half the week. A short time later she made the decision to involve the CSA, coincidentally when I met a new partner and I have had to deal with them since. I have always paid every penny that i am due and have enjoyed sporadic periods of access dependant on her mother’s opinion of me, and if I am in a relationship.

Throughout the years since then and up to now i have never walked or waned from my responsibilities to my daughter and have enjoyed a good relationship with her and have always requested parental responsibilities. Parental responsibility has always been strenuously refused to me by her mother, and up to this date I have been unsuccessful in gaining this. I know that I could do through application to the courts but have used solicitors many times to get access to her back I just could not afford another expensive saga.

The CSA calculated on the fantastic old 1993 system that i should pay from a 4 weekly wage of £1350, £270. This equated to roughly 20% of my pay. As i work for the Local Authority this comes straight off my pay at source. The amount since I started paying in 2002 has increased as my wage increased. My 4 week wage is now 1850 4 weekly, increased due to small wage increases, promotion, and a subsistence for working away from home on many occasions. My ex-partner demanded a reassessment of my wage and the CSA now demand £512 every 4 weeks!! This is now 28% of my wage. But an increase in the total amount to pay of 91% when my wage has only increased by 37%.

My ex made a request for reassessment mid-December 2012. I was alerted to this by phone call start of February 2013, some 6-7 weeks later. I complied and sent in wage slips so that the new assessment could be calculated. I received a letter back to say that the new amount that I needed to pay would be finalised around mid-march. A bit of breathing space I thought until I have to make the increased payments.

By the time I received the final calculated amount by letter I somehow had accrued roughly £800 of debt. I was never told that the new calculation would be backdated to the time my ex had made the original call for the re-assessment. So from when that call was made until my first new payment I had owed around £62 per week. Bearing in mind I never knew about the request for re-assessment for 6 weeks and then another 7 weeks until the calculation and new payment schedule was implemented. I had now amassed roughly £800 in arrears before i would start making the 91% increased payments. Because of the massive increase the CSA were kind enough to let me pay off the arrears at £10 per week. So the new amount I now pay is £516 every 4 weeks including the arrears. Worked out per month £559. Per week £128, roughly. For 1 child!!!!

For the record, I am in no way saying that I do not have a responsibility to pay, of course I have and have always been willing to do so. But I do not have a high paying job, have a luxurious car or lifestyle, and indeed struggle with this amount as am sure a lot of people would. But this new amount is extreme.

Even to be on the post 2003 (CSA2) system would mean I would pay roughly half of what I pay now, but to be honest i wonder how government ministers consider a pre-2003 child needs twice as much money to look after than a post 2003 child. Bearing in mind in 2003 we were all told that we would all be put onto this new system. But that never happened; it would be random cases that would transfer first??? Or, the computer systems not working???

Excuses were aplenty. So you sit in silence hoping something will change. And it did, the introduction of the Child Maintenance Service 2012. But Wait, again there will be a hierarchy of what cases get transferred, this will or could happen as late as 2017, and the computer system is not working?? I’ve heard that before. On this new system I would pay less than half of what I’m paying now. Not my formulas but the DWP’S.

SO:
CSA1 £128 per week (which I am on at present)
CSA2 15% of net income of £1856 (every 4 weeks) is £278 / 4 = £69.50 per week
CMS Gross – Pension is £31576 per annum – £3666 annual pension contribution
Is £27910, 12% of that amount / 365 days * 7 days giving weekly amount of
£64.20 per week

Why is it at a massive cost to the taxpayers, 2 new systems have been introduced since the 1993 system has stopped, but there are still people like myself that are being held paying far more that what the DWP think I should pay on that system that was deemed to be out of date and not fit for purpose. In my case this is now 11 years out of date. Potentially and most likely by the time 2017 comes around it will be 14 years out of date.

To us fathers or NRP’s as we are known that are still on this old, debt accumulating, proven to not work, out of date, not fit for purpose draconian system, this is not only discriminatory, but a total injustice, and prevention of a quality of life allowed to those fathers and children that happened to find themselves in a similar situation since 2003.

With tears of frustration,

Thanks for taking the time to read