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My daughter has been living with her mother until July 2013. Due to her mother's alcoholism and inability to care for her the social services and school liaised and eventually she came to live with me. I ceased making csa payments. After approx 4 months my daughter, despite advice from social services, school, relatives and me, decided her mum had stopped drinking and returned home. I began making payments directly to my ex wifes account. Shortly after i was contacted by the csa saying she had claimed i had not paid her. They also reviewed the whole case and informed me there had been an oversight and that i also owed back pay of £3000 from the first year of payment. My daughter resided with her mum for a year and the same scenario has reocurred. The difference this time being that my daughter has matured immensely and we do believe she will stay permanently. Once again I have ceased payments.
The csa demanded a response from us within 7 days to include evidence of all payments dating back 5 years...This put me under great stress but I managed to send the information. I had evidence of £6300 of payments. I also told them in this letter that my daughter was living with me again and therefore my payments had ceased. We have have had a letter since that says no new evidence has been shown so payments will be unchanged??? So doeS this mean I do or don't owe the arrears?
If the arrears still stand does this mean that they are offsetting arrears from that which my ex we would owe me for my daughter or do I actually have to make a fresh claim? As we have 2 incomes in our fsmiky I do not want to take money from my ex wife, however if we are still liable to pay her the arrears detracting money from our budget that we need to feed and clothe my 2 daughters (one has lived with me for many years and my ex has never paid a penny towards her welfare) and my son from my new marriage I feel I will need to claim to make ends meet.
I don't know the answers to your questions wrlad (I'm sure someone here will have the technical knowledge you need), but I wish you well in resolving this one. CSA is just a debt collection agency, and (in my experience) very poor at resolving real problems. I have an issue with them at the moment (nowhere near as troublesome as yours) that has taken 2 months and 4 reminders to get them to respond to.
Good luck and best wishes,
A
If you didn't inform the CSA at the time that your daughter was living with your, then the liability continues and they won't backdate - they only go on the information that they have. Equally, unfortunately, if you were paying directly to your ex, when you had previously been paying through the CSA, they will possibly try to disregard those payments - I suspect this has happened from the amount of arrears.
I would ask them for a written statement of arrears and payments, and also go and see your MP asap as they can raise a complaint at a higher priority. Also, put in a claim against your ex - her drinking is her problem, it shouldn't be your daughters. If you don't need the money, then put it into a savings account for your daughter for when she's older to help her through uni, buy a car or towards a house etc
Hello wrlad
When your circumstances changed, the Child Support Agency (CSA) should have been informed, this is a legal responsibility. If they were not your liability to pay will have continued. If your ex-wife started the claim, she is the person who should close it.
You are entitled to claim maintenance from your ex-wife for your children who live with you. However, it is not the CSA who deal with new claims now, it is the Child Maintenance Service.
If you would like to appeal against any decisions the CSA have made or are making, you can find details of how to do that here, https://www.gov.uk/child-maintenance/complaints-and-appeals. This link also contains information about how to ask the Independent Case Examiner to look at your case.
If you would like more information about the Child Maintenance Service, you can find that here, https://www.gov.uk/child-maintenance.
To start a claim for maintenance yourself, you would also need to be receiving Child Benefit for your children. If you do not already receive that, you can find out how to claim it here, https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit.
If you do decide to start a claim with the Child Maintenance Service, you will need to contact Child Maintenance Options first, http://www.cmoptions.org. On that website you will find the contact details and lots of tools and information regarding all aspects of child maintenance.
Regards
William
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