case ended 3 years ago

A question about : case ended 3 years ago

I have been on CSA1 for the last 14 yrs so,
last week I contacted the CSA by both email and phone asking for a child benefit check for my son who i thought may have started uni, I was contacted last Thursday by the CSA telling me that my case is now closed as from October 14th 2011, and that they would send a letter out confirming this, also that the finance dept would be in contact about refunding my over payments. I do know that I don't owe any arrears as I was refunded Ј168 in August 2014 for over payments from last July when I moved house and was told that my account was up to date. Does anyone know what will happen next? will i get the full amount back which amounts to well over Ј12000, I do have all my pay slips and work are going to give me a print out of my wages showing CSA payments for the last 3 years, I have been advised that when the CSA phone me not to agree to anything over the phone but to ask for a letter with a full break down of my over payments, My work place also charged me Ј1 admin fee for my CSA payments to be taken out, so will i get this back? what about the interest on the money i have over paid?
I have had no contact with my kids for 13 yrs now so would of had no idea what my son was up to after he left school, I feel like I have been a victim of fraud so will my Ex get taken to court over all this? Back in 2010 when the CSA went benefit disrecard I found out that my ex went out and bought a horse so will she have to sell this to pay her debt off just as they make the NRP sell their assets? I do wonder if she will be fined the Ј1000 that they threaten the NRP with for giving false information? One more thing when I moved house last year my Ex asked for a reassement as she said that my G/F was living with me, which she was not, so why did she not tell them then that she was not claiming child benefit for my son?

Best answers:

• Something suspicious about this. I find it hard to believe that she could get away with it for 3 years. Mostly because when the child turns 16 you have to complete quite a comprehensive form from the CB office in which you have to include contact details of the college etc that they are attending and CB can (and do! contact the colleges.
  I dont know what would happen if it is true, but I would be wary, sounds to good to be true.
• Maybe that's why she waited until October, fiiled the forms out in the sept knowing fine well that the child benefit would stop in the oct, so that as far as the CSA where concerned my Ex was still claiming, My ex is very money obssesed. I got the letter yesterday confirming that my case finished Oct 14th 2011
• They just trust the pwc to be telling the truth about the Ch/ben.....its beyond belief ...we found the same thing ......We asked for facts from the college to be looked at but CSA just not interested.....
• Have you asked for CB checks in the last 3 years? If so, what was the outcome?
• The ongoing case finished last Sept but still paying so called arrears while waiting for them to find out !
• The CSA told me on the phone last Monday that it would take 4-5 weeks for a child benefit check, yet they got back to me on the Thursday to say that my case was closed, I have been told by someone who works for child benefit that it can be checked in a matter of minutes as alot of gov bodies have access to the child benefit records,, try what I did email them requesting a benefit check then phone them straight away asking for a benefit check, and tell them that you have already emailed them aswell. I used the CMS website for the email and phone numbers!! It worked for me
• I can believe it, we had to continue to pay when the child in question wasn't even living in the mother's house, the CSA often seem to take the PWC's word for things even in the face of evidence to disprove it. We also overpaid for a while as the PWC did not inform the CSA that she was no longer getting Child Benefit for that child. Thankfully it wasn't 3 years, more like 3 months, but they didn't return the money to us in a lump sum, but we had to be proactive and ask for a benefits check before the case was reassessed. Had we not done so in our ignorance we could still be paying for that child.
  Just a word of caution, the money we'd overpaid was given back in dribs and drabs over a few months so that the PWC got used to the lower amount. Apparently it wasn't fair to the PWC to take it back as a lump sum as it may have caused her financial hardship - regardless of the fact that she wasn't entitled to that money in the first place!
  I hope that isn't the case for you, and I hope you get repaid the full amount asap.
  Sadly another incident of the unfair system weighted in favour of the PWC, but glad you've managed to sort it out.
• thanks for your reply. I was under the impression that i would get the full amount back in one lump sum and that the CSA would start a repayment plan for my Ex,, How long did you have to wait for them to get back to you from when they informed you of case closure?
  Do you think it would be worth getting my MP involved if the CSA try and pay back drips and drabs or try and refund me less than I have paid over? I do feel that I have been a victim of fraud as my ex knew exactly what she was doing by not informing the CSA about the child benefit,
• When we were informed that we'd overpaid the finance dept got back to us amazingly quickly to tell us the figures by phone followed by a letter. I don't ever remember the CSA acting so speedily. The money we had overpaid was repaid over about 4 or 5 months by us paying a lower monthly amount as the case hasn't closed, there is still another dependent child.
  Have sent you pm
• thanks for your 13kent. I phoned the CSA fiance dept last night and spoke to a male member of staff, he was very polite on the phone, he got my details up and although my case has been closed but the DEO for my wages has not been cancelled, which he did for me. I was also informed that that he would pass my case onto someone else to process my refund and that they had a 3 month back log
  While I was on the phone I also asked for an areas check as I had a refund in August he confirmed that their was no areas on the case, and that i will get a full refund back, but he did say that the normal refunds are for 3-4 months not 3 years
  One more thing I asked if my Ex will have to repay any of the money, I was told she will be asked but may not have to pay it back, which I find unreal as she has committed fraud by claiming child support from a govement body.
• [QUOTE= and that i will get a full refund back, but he did say that the normal refunds are for 3-4 months not 3 years
  [/QUOTE]
  Hi jarhead, what in Gods name is that supposed to mean, you say they told you that you would get a full refund but it may only be for 3 or 4 months?????, they really do talk nonsense!
  Your situation sounds very similar to mine as you will know if you have glanced over my previous posts, the only main difference being that they owe you a lot more by the look of things.
  As far as my situation was concerned the system quite happily let me carry on paying for 2 full years after my liability had ended. I obviously cannot promise you anything but my next step was to make clear to them that I now had nothing to lose anymore as they no longer had a hold over me, and that I would pursue them down every avenue open to me such as MP, newspapers or whatever until I received the money that lets face it, they had stolen from me, or that all those avenues were completely exhausted!
  For the record, as I recall, I received a few thousand pounds refunded into my account in around 3 months I believe it was from the day I rang CSA to check on the status of Child Benefit still being paid or not to the ex ( it took them a few minutes in the same phone call to check this!!!), to the day I eventually got all my money back.
  Please do not let them fob you off, they actually had the damn cheek to suggest to me that if they considered that the child had benefitted from the extra money then I may not receive a refund! WHAT!, they were telling me on one hand that I no longer had a liability to pay for the last two years but then trying to tell me I may not have received my money back, I dont think so, this fired me up even more and I was very clear that I was not going to go away!
  Now, don't get me wrong on this, I am not a fool and I am sure that they probably did not give a jot about my protests to them over the phone, and would probably quite happily have left me ranting into space if they had wanted to. My belief, and that's all it is, is that there is an awful lot of this going on if you read these forums and I think someone somewhere has messed up big time by allowing this situation to slip through the net, it really is disgusting. Keep on at them, ring them at the very least once a week to check on the progression of your refund and see how it goes. Good Luck.
  PS, they actually also had to ask me if I wanted my money back, seriously, can you believe it. To justify the question they will try to send you on a guilt trip by suggesting, as you have already touched on, that they would now have to ask the ex to in effect repay all the money that she had received ( even though it had been fraudulently).
• Thanks for your reply CSA survivor.. I did phone the CSA last Monday and spoke to a female who told me that the fiance team will be in contact with me in about 6 weeks, but I will take your advice and phone them once a week, she also said that it was alot of money to come out of the public purse, and any refund might depend on the PWC ability to repay!!! I can't understand why they are not taking my ex to court!! After all she has defrauded a govement dept can I push for this?
  How can the CSA use the pathetic excuse that the child will of benefited from my overpayment.. when she went out and bought a horse after the CSA went benefit disregard in 2010, the only thing that the overpayments went on was horses, the local pub and booze busters!!! Why Don't the CSA get onto booze busters and ask them for the money back!! Lol,
  I do have all my payslips from October 2011 showing my DEO for the CSA, also I did get Ј160 refund from overpayment in August for paying too much in 2013, the woman that I spoke to did say that my account was up to date so I should get a full refund, unless the fiance dept find any arrears, she also advised me to stick to my guns!!! What ever that means??
• Well here is an update!!! I contacted the CSA yesterday for an update on my over payments (Ј12400 aprox), as its been about 5 weeks since they contacted me informing me that my case is now closed as from 14th October 2011.
  I was told that the finance dept would have to check my accounts to see if I had under payed them since my case had begun, which i find rather strange as I was refunded Ј167 in september as they had checked everything and showed an over payment for Ј167. As i pay by DEO from my wages how can their be any arrears, i think that the CSA are trying to get out of paying me all my over payments. If they had already done a full accounts check in August then they must know that their is no arrears!!
  The CSA worker also told me that it would take them well into the new year as they had a back log, well they only gave me a certain time to send off my wage slips when I was reassessed so why can't they use the same time scale, one more thing my Ex won't be getting taken to court for fraud against the CSA why is this!!!
• Thats what we found ,one rule for them another for the nrp! You could'nt make it up could you ? Can Nacsa do anything for you ?