Welcome to the DAD.Info forum: Important Information – open to read:
Our forum aims to provide support and guidance where it can, however we may not always have the answer. The forum is not moderated 24 hours a day, so If you – or someone you know – are being harmed or in immediate danger of being harmed, call the police on 999.
Alternatively, if you are in crisis, please call Samaritans on 116 123.
If you are worried about you or someone you know is at risk of harm, please click here: How we can help
Hi all,
Im interested to know if any other dads who have had additional children with their new family have had probles with CSA adjusting payments.
Like most of us Dads on here i have a back story that is complicated in parts, with many tales of unreasonable mothers, refused contact, court orders etc etc...
Anyway, to cut a long story short (no doubt you will hear the rest of it at some point) i have been paying maintenance via CSA for my 6 year old daughter (whom after several trips to court with my ex wife i now have overnight contact with every other weekend) for over 2 years with very few issues other than my ex claiming its still not enough and my growing anger at seeing her spending the money on nights out, hair cuts, holidays etc whilst i can afford none of those luxuries!
Anyway, 9 weeks ago my partner (with whom i have lived for nearly 2 years) gave birth to our son and naturally i informed CSA of this new addition to my resident family a few days after, so that they could assess and adjust my payments accordingly.
Easy right?
Far from easy apparently...
9 weeks later and i have just receieved my 4th letter from the CSA explaining my new weekly payment requirements and how this will be paid over the next 12 months. letters 1, 2 and 3 by the way were all incorrect and needed to be re-assessed - but only after i had quiried them.
Well it turns out that i have been overpaying for the last 2 years so i am owed some money back! Great! Im sure they will just take that from my future payments accordingly will they?
Apparently not. What they want to do is take into account the month we are currently in and assume that i wont be making that payment on time (even though i pay by DD every month on the 28th and have never missed a payment), they will then class that "missed" payment as arrears and divide it into three unequal amounts(?) and add it to my next three months payments??
Bearing in mind it is now May and my son was born in March, i was told that the payments would be backdated to the date that i informed them of my sons birth, but instead of just deducting the amount of weeks i have overpaid since his birth and giving me that back by reducing my payemnts accordingly, thay have decided to take that amount from my apparent "arrears", which brings down the amount of my total arrears. Following so far?
My new 'reduced' payment for the next 3 months is now going to be more than it was before my son was born, and thats after they found that i had been overpaying anyway?!?
I asked for a simple breakdown of how it is all worked out and not one person i spoke to could give it to me. SO i gave it to them as simple as i could with my calculator and my Excel spreadsheet open in front of me - i said i would even send them my spreadsheet if they liked but didnt respond.
I asked why i was in arrears in the first place and they confirmed that i was in fact up to date with payments but for some reason the 'system' had said i had missed a payment.
So now they are telling me that my next payment will be at my new rate but slightly reduced for the first month due to overpayments made to date becuse their workings out were incorrect for the last 2 years (only by a few quid but thats not the point), and the following payments will reduce in line with my new rate.
Now we are getting somewhere...
...but what about the backdated payments due between my son being born and my last payment (2 months paid at old rate since his birth)?
"Well as the letter explains Mr Close that amount (undisclosed BTW) has been deducted from your arrears"
"Oh you mean the arrears that you have just confirmed do not exist???"
Guess what - they are going to write to me again with another schedule of payments for the next 12 months...
By the way i also learned today that my payments are based on a 53 week year - not 52 weeks? When i asked for the reasoning behind this i was told that its just how the system decided to do it and in some cases it could be less than 52 weeks!
"Do you think thats fair?" i asked; "Not really - but its just the way the system does it" was the response.
I rest my case.
apparently, it IS that difficult ;;)
Welcome to the DAD.info forum.
We don’t like to set ‘rules’, but to make sure that you and the other dads are kept safe, we have some requests. When engaging with the forum, please be aware of the following:
- The forum is not moderated 24 hours per day.
- Many of the moderators do so on a voluntary basis. Whilst they may be able to provide some guidance, advice or support, they may not be able to deal with specifics.
- We are not an emergency crisis service so if you or someone else is in immediate danger, please call emergency services.
- If you are concerned about the safety of a child, please click here to find the support you can get for them (link to new page)
- If you are in crisis, please call Samaritans on 116 123. They are open 24 hours a day, 7 days per week.
We hope you find this forum a supportive environment and thank you for joining us.