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I have just joined and it appears the advice I have seen has been from the perspective of Dad's having to pay maintenance, not the other way around. This is not the case as I have both my daughters living with me and receive payments from my ex-wife.
The issue I have is how non uniform the payments dates are.
My ex has the payment taken from her salary on 1st of the month.....the crazy situation is that the CSA allow her employer until 19th of the next month to pay them, who in turn have to process it to my bank, who then have to process it. It's a crazy system.
Essentially the employer has approximately 7 weeks to send it, not for the CSA to receive it, but send it, plus all the other process time, that's anything up to 2 months from my ex having it taken from her salary.
You may think that once this process is in place it will just be the initial 2 months then, thinking mathematically, if they start the process every month then the payments should come every month.....aha, that is where it falls down.
Her employer which is a health trust (i.e. NHS) sometimes takes less than 3 weeks to process, plus the extra csa processing time and I have it by the 25th, but it is so not the same time each month. It can be anything from the 20th to the 30th. I didn't have a payment in april at all, and received it on 6th May, as CSA received it from them on 30th April. I have to date not received May payment and on contacting CSA today, neither have they! CSA stated that the employer were still within their window to provide that payment, even though as of today they have had the money 27 days.....the cynic in me says, interest earned, but who knows. The bigger cynic says if I was a woman would I have these issues??? If they continue to process the payments like this, the knock-on effect will be me having 11 payments in a 12 month period yet the employer having received 12.
Does anyone else have these problems?
Hi There,
As said most of us here are on the other foot and pay the CSA, My money comes from me and not my employer so I would think this speeds things up, would your ex not pay you, and that's why it has been attached to her earnings?
It does sound awful the way the system is, but I think I can say with 99% confidence that it doesn't matter what your gender it would be the same, the CSA have terrible systems and rules, but they wouldn't be able to discriminate between male or female, you would be treated as a case number so gender wouldn't come into it.
GTTS
As I said, just the cynic in me. The reason the CSA was involved as with alot of cases is that she refused to pay. CSA will soon be replaced, but unfortunately with in my opinion a far worse system. They will take a percentage and small intial charges.
I'm in the same position in that I'm the father with care, and my ex pays, but it is taken directly from benefits, so still not quite the position you are in.
It might be worth changing your mindset, for your own sanity. Make the assumption that payments always come through 7 weeks late and every month you will still get a payment, so you will still receive 12 payments a year, but just 7 weeks behind. The new system won't actually involve any charges for you as things stand, as your ex hasn't actually missed any payments (she is paying within the allowed timescale) so you will go onto direct pay until such time as she misses a payment - at that point, then yes, there will be a 4% deduction from your payment, but she will also have to pay 20% extra, so there is a big incentive for her to pay on time.
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