Why does the CSA not take trust income into account?
In 2004, in Cape Town, South Africa, my husband filed for divorce. I was well off and owned 3 guest houses outright with a good income. I am Scottish, my now ex is from a wealthy North London family and lives off the income from his wealthy family trusts.
He used to live off me also. His lawyers were given an ‘open purse’ by his family to destroy me and over the course of the following 10 years he has litigated me and our son into homelessness and destitution.
We were found in Glasgow by the homeless team in 2012, living in a damp old caravan in the Scottish Winter with no electricity or running water. My son wet the bed every night but there was nowhere to wash and dry the sheets. It was like some hellish nightmare. My ex is also living back in the UK, in Cambridgeshire. After costing me half a million pounds in legal fees to defend my right to keep custody of our son, he chooses never to contact him or see him.
He sends a Christmas card with a £20 Argos voucher once a year. He has heaped lie upon lie to the CSA, who took his word that he has no employment and can only afford £5 a week in child maintenance. He was, however, found to have misrepresented his financials to a limited extent, and we now get £40 a week.
This took 4 stressful years and a tribunal to achieve. However, my ex husband and his father, along with Coutts Bank in London, distribute up to £50,000 (fifty thousand pounds) a year to ‘the poor’, from the wealth they bank with Coutts, in order to offset income tax.
It costs them nothing as it would otherwise go to the tax man. They do so via the DIBS Trust which was set up by my son’s great grandfather in the 1960s. The CSA do not take Trust income into account when assessing child support!!!
I was told by Coutts Bank that I could apply to the Trustees (my son’s father and grandfather) for a couple of hundred pounds if I wished…? We now live in a social housing flat on benefits. I am too ill to work again, suffering from the stress of dealing with the CSA since 2009.
They have no powers to investigate whether a non resident parent is telling the truth about their true financial position and I do not have the money to hire a private detective to uncover the reality of the situation. I cannot afford to pay our electricity or gas bills, nor afford new clothes and shoes for our son who is growing at an astonishing rate and I am facing bankruptcy. We have not had a holiday for years while my ex husband continues to live a high standard of living with his £100,000 pa income from his family trust.
The government are having to ‘pick up the tab’ for this playboy father, whose access to wealth has destroyed my own finances via unethical lawyers in Cape Town. The CSA should be given the powers to properly investigate individuals who leave their children destitute, otherwise the British taxpayer ends up footing the bill.
5 thoughts on “Why does the CSA not take trust income into account?”
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Contact the CSA and tell them you need them to send you a booklet application for a variation to the child maintenance calculation. this booklet you must fill in. Just remember this is a powerful way to go, this booklet is what lost me my life, health, job and everything I owned. That is really bad I feel for you and your child. I understand what it is like to have everything and then nothing. The CSA took everything off us to pay for the my husbands ex wife child that was not even my husbands.
Surely you get your child tax credit and child benefit for your son!! Whilst I’m sure you living well below what you are accustomed to that should be enough to to keep your child clothed. I’m also assuming that with you being on benefits your council tax and housing rent are paid for. Yes your sons child should be providing for his son but £40 a week maintenance is a hell if a lot more money than some people get. I’d say after 10 years if battling with your ex that perhaps it is now time to put this to rest put it down to a bad experience and move on with your life as you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. If the reason you can’t get a job is because of stress I feel 1ce you let this go you will feel a whole lot better and be able to go out and find a job like most other people who are stressed do!! Your ex is obviously weasel who will just continue to destroy you if you allow him to. Show him your better than all this and show your son how strong you are and provide for him. Your son will figure out the kind of man his Father is all in good time. You may find these harsh words but sometimes that’s what people need. I hope your situation improves and life gets better for you, but only you can make that happen!! Good luck for a better future for you and your boy!!
Ellie, if it was down to people like you, no progress would be made and children would be tied to welfare benefits indefinitely. If you simply accept that £40 a week is more than most people get, that is appalling apathy. People like me, who persevere and lobby for change, are the ones who drive things forward and make changes. Fighting for delivery of a proper service from the CSA does ‘knock the stuffing’ out of a person. But I am prepared to fight on rather than simply give up and give in. Your should try it yourself sometime ! By the way, I am not interested in what my son thinks of his father. I am however, interested in the way my son sees me. He sees me as a strong woman who fights for him and for justice every day, and he also loves me.
All I can say
Is welcome to the unfair system called the csa. And it’s normally the Nrp on the receiving end of the crap you are getting and 9 times out of 10 it’s the father where the opposite is also true. Where the father struggles to make ends meet and keep the roof over his head, cannot see his kids because he has no money after being bled dry by the CSA and pwc.
She however, may live with a partner who is a millionaire, the kids want for nothing, 2-3 holidays a yr, fine cars, beautiful house, and the Nrp is NOT cut any slack.
Yes you are right, it should be means tested for both pwc and Nrp. But it’s not and it stinks, but anyway the csa 9 times out 10 works in favour of the pwc and does not give a toss about the Nrp.
Gonk
On a personal note
Where a mother walks out of a family home and supporting husband as I was, because she can’t keep her legs closed to other men, takes my child with her to live with him because I’m not needed anymore……( oh well not totally)…..the bitch still wanted my money each month lol.
As far as I’m concerned, she and he wanted each other and my child, they therefore should take care of her everyday needs….why should I , she don’t live with me, I never asked for the card I was dealt, I never walked out on her.
HOWEVER I, as a father to that child would happily pay for ALL other needs and wants of my child, like the latest designer cloths and gadgets, the school trips, the holiday money for when the x takes her away. Anything infact that I could afford. Does that not seem fair ??? Anybody like to comment. The ex and her new partner look after her every day NEEDS. I look after her WANTS. THATS what I call fair and square, but instead, I’m forced to hand over £300 each month to her mother and him to do what they want with. AND I’m still expected to have some kind of relationship with my daughter and that to at MY expense. Her bitch of a mother would not have it any other way in fear of it impacting on what she bleeds from me each month.
Like most of you greedy pwc bitches, it’s your way or the highway
Gonk