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I am a non-resident parent who has disappeared abroad. I was ex-military and then spent 16 years as a prison officer before becoming self employed. I have battled with the Child Support Agency for 6 years and my gripe is that a very corrupt and unfair system has separated many children from loving fathers.
For one child I was meant to pay 15% of my earnings. The calculations by the Child Support Agency reached as high as 90% of my earnings. The CSA refused to accept copies of my bank statements or Income Tax returns and stated all information had to come from the resident parent.
I tried to fight the Child Support Agency through the Court but I was told by the Magistrate to "Sit down and be quiet, if the Secretary of State says you owe money, then you owe money". The Child Support Agency does not have to explain their calculations, therefore if you are the father of the child you are guilty and a Court Liability Order is issued. At the end of 2009 the Child Support Agency was given new powers and could directly issue Liability Orders bypassing the court.
legal firms had stopped taking the cases
I tried to enlist help at four big law firms in Doncaster and was shown the doors. One solicitor that would talk to me advised me that as long as I had property I would not be left alone. I attended the Citizens Advice Bureau in Thorne and was told that there was nothing they could do for me. They said the Child Support Agency were a law unto themselves and that legal firms had stopped taking the cases because they could not win.
With the help of my father we wrote to everybody we could think of from the Ombudsman to the Prime Minister, all to no avail as the responses all directed us back to the CSA! In 2010 the Child Support Agency took out a court order on my property in Doncaster. The next step would be to force the sale of the property and take the proceeds. This would also close my business as I would have no where to store my stock.
I would argue that the CSA could perhaps even be responsible for some fathers taking their own lives as they are left with no finances and no hope. The only other option currently left to fathers is to leave the country and disappear. I've even heard that they are in some cases trying to have passports automatically removed to stop this happening.
Realising that my property was about to be pulled from under me along with it my business, I sold everything I could and chose to disappear. I now live abroad and will not return to the UK. At best the future for me in the UK would have been a bedsit on the DHSS and no money to take my daughter out, at worst a prison sentence for non payment of money I could not afford and did not owe..
I love my daughter very much and do not believe I took an easy way out. I keep in touch with my daughter by email, and still support her financially. My daughter was and is my greatest gift and I miss her everyday. I currently hold a three inch file verifying all the above and my story in great detail.
By: Maurice Milsom
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this story is harrowing and for me just reading this is quite upsetting. I can imagine only a portion of what you have gone through and how much you miss and love your daughter. its not the people who work for the CSA its the powers that they are given that mess peoples lives up. the employers just enforce them, I wonder if it is a bonus related job, the more money you collect the higher your bonus is?, because surely no person who works for the CSA/CMS really wants to see fathers crushed financially and messed up mentally contemplating moving and being away from their kids completely, or even committing suicide!!
I split from my wife in 2009 and left behind the family home for her to raise my daughters in, paid an agreement monthly fee and have never messed a payment, I was so emotionally messed up it was just crucifying for many a reason as you can imagine.
I believed in life again moved on and 6 years a go thought I met an amazing person, she wanted children I wasn't able due to a vasectomy, yes I had it reversed to try for a child, unfortunately we had to go through IVF as she was unable to have anymore children, but now she has decided to leave with my twin boys who aren't even 2 years old, and guess what? here we go again 17 years of CMA to look forward to. how im going to cope is any ones guess.
life can be so cruel with the loss of a family unit, but to add on extremes amount of money, which cant be right the way its worked out. she walks away with half the house, maintenance tax credits, not bad eh? Joke
And why not!
Welcome to Australia! More sunshine and more pay for the same job.
Finally I thought "sod it" and got a job with a foreign company in the Middle East. It was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders - freedom!
I am in the middle of wondering if moving abroad maybe the only sensible choice left to me. I have always paid for all my children even when I m not allowed to see them, without the help of the csa thieves. More maintenance than the csa want me to give them ( less their costs ( think of a sum double it add 50)). Direct to the mothers. I also have all the proof, yet they still hound me. All because the mother has some"gripe" with me. Even when challenged with facts in court they still keep going even when they agree in court that they have made a mistake. Corruption at its highest form. Gover-haha-ment Approved bully boy debt collectors, who employ brainwashed souls. Persecute all fathers, regardless of the situation. Never holding up to be anything of any value. More misery than gain.
But its only a slice of the corruption in the system.
the latest is an out of the blue deo and two weeks later my fifth liability order.
i don,t know what to believe from the csa or any of these sites to be honest.
i,m fighting these debt collectors all the way too. just don,t give in.
ai the end of the day just remember they are only people.
why did you not call the CSA earlier when the arrears were due to be paid up? surely you must have known when they were due to finish?
silly you!
Yesterday I phoned to suggest that perhaps it was time I stopped paying as I had over paid by £461.94. Oh no I still owed some £300. How come I asked. You did not stick to the repayment scheme. 'I made a call on the 20th Oct 2007 and agreed a lesser amount' said I. 'we have no record of that' said they. 'We also don't have a paper copy of the original letter'. Could you get it please I asked. It's in storage they replied. how long will it take you to get it? We can't until you officially challenge our estimate. Is that not what I am doing?
I asked if it was not a simple arithmetical sum 46 months x £29.82 = £1371.72 therefore oops an overpayment. But you did not use the agreed schedule. Ok but I have still paid to much. not according to the system. I need to write and prove that I have made the payments. Dont you have a record of the payments I have made? Yes, they do. So can't you work out how much I have over paid? our system shows you still owe £300.
Ok, how and what constitutes proof of payment. This was worth the whole excruciating phone call. I CAN'T TELL YOU they said.
They then said 'i hope you have a good day'.... 'Very unlikely' I replied! Grrrrr!
I've also come across the Shouting Match; but the Strategic Deafness is one I haven't been a victim of (yet).
They just love to pi$$ you off!
The Robot Writer:
A company asking you to write into them about a complaint or request, specifying your issue tailored to your needs and all you get back from the named recipient is a response that reads more like a standard 'Dear Customer' letter because it makes no attempt whatsoever to address any of your points you wrote or to give you what you asked for.
Strategic deafness:
When you phone someone about a problem or complaint or a sensitive issue they don't really want to deal with and they think you might be recording them on loudspeaker - to verify what they lied to you about - they claim that 'you are breaking up' (poor signal) even though you haven't altered your phone, which is same distance away, same mouthpiece position and volume as with your last call to the same person or someone else on the same phone who was not threatened by your call who heard everything perfectly well. The best way to test out that these people are lying about your poor signal - and are not genuinely deaf - is: "can you hear me now? Say that several times during your difficult and frustrating call - still recording everything they say. Normally they always answer immediately with "no, I can't - you are breaking up." Of course, if they really can't hear you they wouldn't know how to answer because they wouldn't have heard your question in the first place. This problem normally erupts suddenly, usually when you arrive at a critical point in your query / problem that requires a response or resolution from them; not when you are asking who they are or when you are engaging in any other non-value dialogue during the call. When that happens, the signal seems to be perfectly fine.
Shouting match:
Another one - again when you arrive at a critical point - is when the respondent just talks over you and refuses to let you finish what you are saying and just ploughs through with lots of irrelevant or unhelpful monologue, which is normally not related to the point you weren't able to make in fulll or just going over old ground you don't need to cover. Then you are forced to shout to get them to stop talking so that you can finish your relevant points. When they are finally forced to listen, becasue you shouted at them: "listen to what I'm saying and stop talking over me", they claim that it is you that won't let them get a word in edgewise and it's you raising your voice and being abusive to them. When you finally lose your temper completely, they just cut you off.
I've been on the receiving end of this behaviour when having to complain about some appalling service; can't remember who. Customer service staff seem to be trained in winding people up so that they can fail to deal with your complaint and make it your fault!
Davedad
Make privilege lol