Hi all basically I split with my ex 5 years ago. She hasn’t allowed me to see my son since we broke up straight away after me she was pregnant by some other dude. Anyway she took the csa which I didnt know about until they sent me a letter saying i owed them 3000 i just laughed and ignored it at the time i didnt realise it would carry on totting up also i was awol from the army at the time because of stress. 2 years ago i started a permanent contract job and the csa added a doe on my wages i paid around 1500 quid before i handed my notice in. This was because by this time i was in 6000 arrears and because im a hgv driver they were going to put it upto 10000 for 3 years of not paying LOL so i jacked the job. Anyway after job hopping with agencies im now back with the same company theyve got hold of me again and say i owe 6300 quid im happy to try and clear that aslong as they dont up it and as long as its paid through direct debit. Once ive cleared these arrears though my ex has no intention of ever letting me see my son ive told her time and time again im willing to pay if i get access but she ignores me! Im not willing to pay her 100 quid a week before my arrears come off at a rate of 40% when she wont let me see him so im wondering if i get a zero hours contract and go self employed would this work to minimise my weekly payment? Shes living the dream shes got solar panels on her roof ffs why im 26 still living at my mums and havent owned car newer than a 2000 plate. In total if i keep trucking i worked it out to be around 48000 ill have to pay her by the times out of full time education all i can say is F that. Im not trying to get away with not paying i just dont want them taking as much as they think they can. Any help will be greatly appreciated.The thought of me giving these half my wage literally makes me think about doing myself in but she would love that! Cheers for any replies sorry for the poor grammar i wrote this from my phone. This is the wrong line of work to have stuff like this going on in someones life to much time to think!!
Your gonna have to pay bud!
Maybe your ex will give you access to your son if you pay!
It’s all earnings based so if you can prove you were earning less than what the CMS say you were then show them payslips and they will reduce what they say you owe.
Why not get a solicitor and get access through the courts. She cant stop you. And its not all favoured on the womens side I got full custody and my ex missis got access.
Don’t take offence to this, but have you taken a DNA test to prove it is your son ?
By going on Job seekers allowance, they can only take £ 5 per week.
Bullys bar forum for non trucking posts.
The Csa call money owed arrears.
If you are going to pay her, the best route is to go self employed were you are payed cash in the hand, for example become a taxi driver, even the tax man can’t prove what you earn.
I believe the CSA can only deal with cases were you are employed and earnings can be proven.
The CSA does not like to chase after non resident parents who are self employed because it is more hassle, requires more legwork, and through creative accounting the self employed are able to disguise earnings, thus reducing the amount they owe to the CSA for the maintenance of their children.
First thing forget this idea of doing yourself in not worth it for the csa
Regarding Weeto’s post i think the csa base payment on what you earn so if self employed pay yourself NMW then the rest as expenses that should reduce your payments.
Unfortunately whereas two people create a life, and then spilt up the man ends up paying for the first 16 to 18 years of that child’s life,it’s a simple fact and you can’t run away from it.
If your ex has moved on with someone else, so should you… if you are having access issues seeing and spending time with your son the only way forward is either mediation and if that doesn’t work then using a solicitor to get access through the courts… You have to question why is the Ex refusing this, under what basis…Yes it will cost and be a bit of an emotional roller coaster but once its in place then its effectively a legally binding contract of sorts
Then comes the part about the CSA, they normally recommend that when a relationship splits, both parties come to an arrangement over access and agree a figure for maintenance, obviously if none was that up in place after the split and you didn’t come up with the money, then your Ex going to the CSA was her only option.
Thing about the CSA is they work out what you should be paying each week/month based on your income ( P60 ), now if you have any challenge to the CSA over this then you must address this sooner rather than later, so be sure to have either wage slips or your (P60’s ) to hand…
Thing about the CSA is, if you should be paying £100 per week for one child say as an example, in fact you’re paying £125 -£130 to the CSA as this money extra is an admin fee… you’d be surprised who much money there making over this… thats why having it sorted with the Ex would have been better, but by all means this doesn’t mean she’s getting £125 - £130… She’s only getting £100.
You question about going self -employed, all I can say is, if you limited your income, then gonna be reducing the amount you will have to pay weekly / monthly… to the Ex…Simple…
End of the day doing yourself in is not the option, plus do you really want your son knowing in years to come you chicken’d out of life…over paying for his up bringing… If you don’t fight the access issue and you don’t get to see your soon…Still send him stuff for birthdays and Christmas… he’ll come and find you in years to come
having been through it sorry mate but you are screwed. they will hunt you down like a dog as if you work your an easy target. the only things that reduce it are benefits (even industrial injuries reduces it to a flat rate of £5 but they wont back date it).
they don’t even give a toss that you don’t see your child, I went to my local MP who again didn’t give a ■■■■. I tried to get a petition online to get the CSA to put on the form the following 2 questions
1, does your ex see the child Y/N
2, do they want to? Y/N
and to me if it was a Y to the 2nd until you have sorted access out the CSA should say sorry but we cant get involved.
by the way the courts are ■■■■ it cost me £25k and still don’t see them as they were always ‘ill’ when it was the weekend and the courts cant do jack ■■■■.
At your age of 30, I would speak to a Doctor, tell him/her what is happening, to prescribe sleeping pills, and antidepressants.
But be careful of the addiction on them.
Another issue is , are you safe to be driving Lgv,s until the mess is sorted out ?
With all this on your mind, the judgment and split second decision making, needed to drive is affected.
New law due for driving on medication to watch out for.
Look at the support from TN members, nobody has ran you down, all positive comments, some that have experience dealing with the CSA, who make the rules up as they go along.
weeto:
If you are going to pay her, the best route is to go self employed were you are payed cash in the hand, for example become a taxi driver, even the tax man can’t prove what you earn.
I believe the CSA can only deal with cases were you are employed and earnings can be proven.CSA Self Employed - child support agency hell
The CSA does not like to chase after non resident parents who are self employed because it is more hassle, requires more legwork, and through creative accounting the self employed are able to disguise earnings, thus reducing the amount they owe to the CSA for the maintenance of their children.
This is exactly what my partners ex does. Drives a taxi and is self employed. He declares he earns next to nothing and so pays a pittance every week for his 2 kids, even though he has access and we know he earns a ■■■■ sight more because he has a mortgage on the house they used to share together and still goes on expensive holidays etc.
1 go self employed,make sure your books show your earning nothing,2 get on the dole/sick/esa/ and work casual.
3,get a job with the paddys in eire running in britain or continental work,all you will need is an address in eire and a irish bank account to make it easy unless your lucky to work for a subbie who will pay you cash,.its always best to have an amicable arrangement with your ex,but it shes in ■■■■■ mode then she deserves the same treatment in return.im not sure the money the csa get from you goes directly to her anyway,so shes just dobbed you in to stuff you,though i could be wrong about the payment thing.
Self employed/limited company, pay yourself the bare minimum (I pay myself £208 a week). The CSA guidelines on the amount of maintenance, on those earnings is about £22 week. Dont know what their view is on expenses/dividends, or even if they’d need to be told, but if you go the self employed route, either as sole trader or limited company, get yourself a good accountant.
You obviously dont begrudge paying for your son, but your ex sounds like she is out for what she can get, and milking it, and a good accountant could put your figures in a more favourable way (for you) to minimise how much the greedy cow can take.
The csa have a buget for each case so the more complicated you make it ,the more you challenge them means they blow their buget and leave you alone.
I met a csa investigator looking at me who was a nice guy and told my out of sympathy after meeting my ex wife to go to court and ask the juge to send me to prison because the csa were driving me to think of suicide, which i did. The judge said they were seriously worried about my state of mind and ripped into the csa telling them to sort themselves out and not to bring me to court again.
i have heard nothing from the csa since 4 years ago .i paid for my daughters driving lessons test and give her money for holidays and other stuff when i can but none of this counts in the csa’s eyes .her mother lives with another bloke in my house which i need £2000 for a pi to prove so i can release my money from the house.
go self employed and only show 16 hours and claim expenses.
Hello mate, sorry to hear about your troubles. It can’t make your life any easier. As other have said, remember that your child is going to grow up. You might not be able to see them in the mean time, but you can still behave honorably. The chances are, they’ll come looking for you when they’re older - it’s up to you to make sure they’ll be proud of the man they find.
As for the CSA stuff, remember that everything is negotiable, one way or another - but the most important thing to do is not make a mess before you start negotiating!
Have a nose around the CAB online site here citizensadvice.org.uk/index/getadvice.htm and see what they can do to help you reduce/manage etc your payments. Any dealings you have with CAB/CSA/CMS/your ex etc, you need to write good notes or good old fashioned kill’em with kindness emails… if stuff goes shiny side down and you end up in court, you want your correspondence to paint you as Mr Reasonable Good-Chap III 
CAB works so slowly that it makes snails look like they’re cracking on a pace, so go in equipped with lots of patience and a thermos of tea! It’s generally do-gooder types who work there, so get them on your side and they’ll do a lot for you… just not very fast!
Crack on, drink copious amounts of tea and keep asking yourself ‘am I doing the right thing?’ so long as the answer is ‘yes’, no matter how unpleasant the thing is, you’ll have a clear conscience and good things will start happening.
Best of luck.
Is there a reason why your Ex won’t let you see your son, was it a violent relationship ?
Problem I find with csa is that they seem to keep changing the goal posts. Originally was having to pay until child was 16 then it changed to 17 then 18 then 19 and now have been told it is 20 as long as in full time education. Since I have no contact I don’t even know how long the course they are on Wi go on for and if it allows for resits if exams are failed.
Ignoring access issues etc best advice I can give is to make the CSA life hard. Do the self employed bit make them wait for figures and massage them figures as much as you can. Their staff are retards who can only read off a computer screen.
topdog1606:
Problem I find with csa is that they seem to keep changing the goal posts. Originally was having to pay until child was 16 then it changed to 17 then 18 then 19 and now have been told it is 20 as long as in full time education. Since I have no contact I don’t even know how long the course they are on Wi go on for and if it allows for resits if exams are failed.
It seems like the government is taking advantage of the sad situation of relationship breakdowns to get out of its responsibilities.By shifting the funding of unemployed young persons’ issues onto parents by calling adults of school leaving age children.Whereas in previous years it was expected that offspring were either in work contributing to the family household budget or left home raising their own family from the point of school leaving age.
Then added to the mix the CSA seem to have created a situation whereby it calculates more money required to be paid to ex’s to raise a family in a broken relationship than if that relationship had stayed together.IE the type of spend per child calculated by the CSA would probably send many households into debt after other outgoings.The result being a situation of not only the diabolical situation of women running off with other blokes and those other blokes being only to keen to oblige but the CSA makes it financially advantageous for them to do so. 
Whereas I’d say that responsibility for child support payments to ex’s should only apply in the case of relationship breakdown caused by domestic violence and/or whoever was responsible for the breakdown.In the case of breakdowns caused by running off with ‘someone else’ then it should be the ‘someone else’ ( homewrecker ) who pays not the victim in the form of the person left with the wreckage of a broken home. 
Good post Carryfast, I concur with it.It seems the man is at fault in the eyes of the CSA, and women get an easy life with a new partner.
If a woman is vulnerable at home and is kicked out, the law must find suitable accommodation with a set time frame, if a man is beaten by a woman, he has to sleep rough on the streets.
Get a voluntary agreement with your ex.
CSA is defunct soon being replaced by cms with the emphasis on parents sorting it out themselves.
Cms check with hmrc regarding what you earn.
Go to gingerbread.org.uk for more info.