Looking for a bit of help and advise before I go back to the CMS. A bit of background to my case:
April 2019- Court order obtained to include 2/3 overnight stays each week. Child maintenance updated and new payment plan received
August 2019- Mum breached court order so enforcement application made at which point mum made a number of false allegations.
September 2019- Interim contact ordered by court but no overnights until CAFCASS had reviewed allegations and court consider whether fact finsing neccesary
January 2020- CAFCASS confirm no concerns and court orders final hearing due in March 2020with no fact finding neccesary as allegations not considered to be true.
In September 2019 mum reported chages in overnight contact to CSA to which I informed them this was due to breach of court order. Nothing further heard until this weekend when I received a letter from the CSA to advise they are reconsidering the payment plan.
They have asked for further evidence to support any changes. I am planning to respond with copies of the court orders and details of the breaches. Is there anything else I need to send? How likely are the CSA to award further maintenance to the mum despite the fact the no overnight stays are due to her breach.
Thanks in advance for any help or advise
Explain word for word to CMS what you have just written on here. There are no changes to your circumstances and your court order remains .
There is a hearing in march 2020 where your contact will be re-instated and you would just send a copy of final order or ring csm to let them know.
Its another example of your ex creating endless problems.
I would with your hearing coming up looking at how your contact can be improved if possible to prevent her from breaching orders. Do you use school as pick ups so you don't have to deal with a hostile ex
Thanks for your quick response.
My child is still at nursery so unfortunately school pickups aren't an option. Where possible in the new court order pickups need to be from nursery to avoid having any contact with her.
At present collections are done by my parents when collection is not from nursery. I don't really want this in the final court order as in theory this should last for the foreseeable and is limited should they experience ill health or not be able to make the collection etc
Yes nursery same as school in theory. When you go to court you need to focus on making final order as water tight as can possibly be. I would where possible have all pick up and drop offs from nursery until your child starts school. don't stipulate a time it just needs to say pick up from school/nursery and drop off to school/nursery. Then either you can do it or parents. the other times you could meet your ex , but do it in a public place preferably with cctv to protect yourself when your parents cant . like you say your parents cant do handovers forever. you could go to her home address in time, I just walk to door make sure children gone in and walk away. definitely don't get involved in disputes in front of children, I communicate via WhatsApp or text
A word of caution here - CMS are only concerned with actual nights spent with you, they don't really care whether an order is breached or not, so if you say she's breached the order, they may decide that you don't have the level of overnights necessary. My inclination would be to simply send the court order, and say nothing about the breaches (don't lie to them, though if they ask) and sort out the breaches through court.
yep good point. all you should do with CMS is post your court order to them, so they know how many nights kids are with you, and they will re-calculate your payments. some of them are odd. when i first spoke to one agent about sending court order, he said hmm i think i need to phone your ex about this lol.
The order has been breached and since August because of this and the court deciding if a fact finding is necessary there have been no overnight stays. So in theory payments should go up but the no overnights has not been through choice but due to here false allegations and court delays.
There have been further court orders following each hearing with the interim contact detailed but this unfortunately did not include overnight stays. Are CMS likely to just calculate it based on what has happened or take into account the breach.
Final hearing is in March when overnight stays will be reinstated
hi,
you just tell CMS what the court order states and how many nights your kids are staying with you. no point discussing breaches. its difficult because your ex can just ring them and tell them your not seeing kids at present, and they can start listening to her.