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Hi I have a son of 17 who lives with his mum I have paid maintenance from the day I left in 2002 on an agreement when went thru court , now he left school he studied a course until 2 months ago, now in full time employment earning £1000 month and no longer at college , do I still pay the agreed maintenance ???
No, is she claiming child benefit? Is so, she is committing benefit fraud, civil duty to report this if she is.
Hi there,
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As already said if she is still claiming CB then she shouldn't be, As you have a private agreement then you could just stop paying and see if she chasing it, she would have too open a case with CMS in order to claim officially and they would check with child benifits team to see if she is still claiming, they would contact you and you could then explain that your son isn't attending college and has a full time job so she shouldn't be claiming CB. You could then raise this with CB team who could look into it.
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I've said above that you have a private agreement I know you said it was court ordered. A court order for maintenance will only stand for 12 months so after this time either parent could contact CSA Now CMS and ask them to take over the case. so as your court order would have been well over 12 months in effect what you now have is a private agreement as in nit one controlled by CSA or CMS.
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GTTS
I'm not sure it is a private agreement - it's still a court order, it's just that after 12 months CSA/CMS can override the court orders in most cases. However, if you stop paying, she'd either have to apply to the CMS as mentioned above, or she could go back to court for enforcement - in which case the court wouldn't take too kindly to the fact that she's illegally claiming benefit and asking the court to condone it.
I would say stop paying now, and for the moment, put the money into a savings account just to be safe, in case the CMS get it wrong, but I reckon in a short space of time, you'll be safe to spend that money yourself.
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