CSA Attachment of earnings, bye bye job!

A question about : CSA Attachment of earnings, bye bye job!

Hi to the forum.

I have had an attachment of earnings for a reasonable £230 per month. Imagine my surprise when I received my wageslip yesterday to find that Legal and Trade collections are now also dipping in through a court order for £450 for previous csa arrears.

So I'm having £680 robbed from my wages every month.

Seeing as I only take home £1100 per Month, I'm left with £420 per month to supposedly live on. That averages out over 52 weeks at £96 per week!

So, I'm doing 50 hours per week busting a gut for £1.92 per hour take home.

What am I supposed to do with that?

So, whats the answer? Well the CSA have now made it impossible for me to earn a living wage so I am going to tell my employer tomorrow that I'm off to join the benefits brigade and become a charge of the state.

The Government had me paying child support, plus received around £530 in tax and NI. Now, the'lll have to lose the £530 and pay for me, my ex Wife and my kids to live!

What a crazy system.

A human rights lawyer would be screaming from the rooftop if they found people in Indonesia stitching footballs at this slave wage!

After all the payments I've made to the CSA, how come I don't get tax credits? After all, that money is a cost for bringing up children. Obviously I'm the wrong sex as the women who have the kids get umpteen benefits, tax credits, you name it whilst the Father just gets hammered.

Welcome to the economics of the madhouse!

Best answers:

• I agree with you, as a woman who has a husband who pays to the CSA it's ludicrous that the mother's word is also taken as fact. We have had hundreds of pounds in arrears because she decided to tell the CSA that we didn't have shared care of the children (when we still did) However they took her word for it and backdated the arrears to when she said we stopped having shared care...grrr So in effect we paid twice. I do find it ludicrous that you are now unable to afford to live sufficiently because of them. Do you have a mortgage etc??
• [quote=blaise802001;6425410] it's ludicrous that the mother's word is also taken as fact. We have had hundreds of pounds in arrears because she decided to tell the CSA that we didn't have shared care of the children (when we still did) However they took her word for it and backdated the arrears to when she said we stopped having shared care...grrr sufficiently [quote]
  You could have asked for a revision on this decision, however this must be done within 28 days of the assessment being done, you can still also report the change if shared care is still in existence but this will only go from the date you report it.
• So do you think you shouldn't have paid the arrears on your child's support ?
  How much is the arrears and why weren't you paying support ?
  Just trying to work out if you deserve the support you are asking for or if you simply chose not to fufil your obligations to your child until forced to.
  I have my own beef with the CSA and their inability to collect money-even when both parents are in agreement and co-operating with them but it isn't clear if this is this kind of situation or something else.
• Why werent you paying in the first place?
• Arrears do not always accrue due to non payment, they can accrue when CSA do a change of circs but it takes them months to calculate ( as per blaise802001 )~ the nrp carries on paying their regular maintenance ( for the months reassessment ongoing) but when the reassessment is done the maintenance has gone up and extra payments are due for that period .'. creating an undercharge which are converted to arrears ( people usually refer to this as backdating of an assessment but it isn't really )
• Asking why I have arrears is irrelevant.
  The point of my post is simply that whatever the rights and wrongs of why I have arrears, I was paying child support and paying tax and NI.
  Surely that situation is better than the one I now find myself in in which I can no longer support myself due to these excessive amounts of money being taken from me and therefore having to go to the state to support 4 people!
• i think you need to sort this out with the csa before you jack your job in as i'm sure you can't claim benefits for 26 weeks due to making yourself out of work. think this through carefully and talk with the jobcentre as you could end up in a bigger mess than you are finding yourself in now.
  hth
• Hmmm not sure what tax and insurance have to do with it and of course it is your absolute right to disclose with information you are comfortable with and withhold that you are not although people are likely to draw their own conclusions .
  Just be aware that if you hope to have any future relationship with your kids (I appreciate that you and your ex aren't in a position to have that now) chances are they will know that Dad deliberately threw in his job so he didn't have to pay for their support and the decision might come back to haunt you. It isn't just your ex you are damaging and there's a real risk your children will resent you for it. Just because there's a lot of anger now doesn't mean it will always be that way. You may feel that the CSA's calculations or methods are unfair but that isn't your children's fault (I'n assuming more than one child by the size of the arrears). I hope you investigate all ways of getting this decision overturned and payments reduced before taking a drastic step that you might regret later.
• hear hear, I also agree they are your children and partly your financial responsibility. I have two older children now in there twenties. Their father refused to pay any maintenance, and guess what they simply want nothing to do with him. My ex even turned up at my son's work once, he worked in a bank, looking for a loan. he didn't even recognise his son and my son CHOSE not to tell him who he is. my daughter is getting married soon, and again wants nothing to do with her father.
  SO the moral of the story is before you jack in your job, I suggest you start paying for your children, in this way they get what THEY need to survive in today's world, and you will maybe gain there respect. this is not the CSA fault but YOUR OWN.
• Duchy,
  I'm just interested in how you think I can pay my rent, buy food, clothes, pay electricity and gas bills, (visit my kids 130 miles away) on less than £100 per week.
  Do you really believe that I can continue to work and live on that basis? Could you and would you?
  You seem to have completely missed the point, perhaps because you have the aggrieved Mother's perspective which seems to be the only one in which any sympathy is ever directed. It's the sisterhood
  I'm NOT leaving my job because I don't want to pay child support! I'm leaving because I cannot live on £97 per week! Also I'm happy to continue to pay my child support AND happy to pay the arrears at a REALISTIC monthly level to continue to be able to work and support myself.
  The government says the Minimum wage is £5.52 per hour, you know, that minimum amount it is deemed to be the bare basic that somebody should be expected to earn. Of course I know that is a gross figure and subject to tax and NI but to take home an average of £97 per week after slogging my guts out for 50 hours in a skilled profession is laughable.
  Also, although irrelevant to this matter, I have to say that I also have an excellent relationship with my ex-wife and see my kids (and have them stay with me) often. She has absolutely no problem with me and unlike many sour Mothers, she doesn't use my kids as a stick to beat me with!
  Please forget your apparent pre-conceptions that I must be an errant Father dodging his responsibilities and engaged in a bitter battle with my ex. I'm sure it eases your conscience to perceive all Fathers who are being hit hard by the CSA as f e c k l e s s (had to spell that word out coz it gets deleted as a swear-word on this site) individuals. You've picked the wrong one here Duchy, I'm not one of them. I'm just a hard working professional man, trying to earn a decent living without being a burden on anybody who has, through unreasonable deductions from my wages found myself in an impossible situation.
• Roy - you clearly can't live on that amount of money; can you challenge the re-assessment with the CSA? Does your ex have any idea how/why this has happened?
• Roy no-one said you were !!!!less-if you'd actually bothered reading my earlier post you'd see I've had my own issues with the CSA-they managed to not collect any money for a year from my ex despite the fact he was willing and able to pay. They simply would not accept that their DD was failing due to an input error on their part. We both (sorry to disappoint you but my ex is a great Dad who sees our son every week and when the CSA didn't do their job would pay me direct instead. I used to call the CSA and tell them and ask them to put it on file and they never did so he was told he had arrears when he didn't ) chased up the CSA endlessly. They ARE useless but too many people (mothers as well as fathers) use that uselessness as an excuse not to pay and then moan bitterly when it bites them on the bum.
  My ex could have been in exactly your position-but he CHOSE not to be. He made payments despite the CSAs cluelessness.
  Frankly if you and your wife are on such great terms then you should be able to sort it out with the CSA. We did-they still don't acknowledge they made a mistake but accepted my declaration that I had been paid and wiped the arrears (although were quite through in ensuring I hadn't been coerced or intimidated into saying so). Either you owe the money or you don't. If you don't then sort it and if you do -well you should have paid it. You say you HAVE been paying it but with such huge arrears payments it sounds like either you have a similar situation to mine (so sortable) or you were underpaying by a ridiculous amount.
  As for is it fair-if you were knowing underpaying then it's a bit like running up a huge creditcard bill and only paying the minimum payment and then crying you only have a little to live on when the interest adds up. If you weren't underpaying then it's sortable-it may take hours on the phone with the CSA talking to people who don't do what they say they will do and will probably need to go through complaints in the end after repeating yourself endlessly but it can be done. We did it.
  Just one question -if you had been paying-why do you have an attachment of earnings for the regular child support too ?
• Duchy, I seem to be hitting a brick wall in trying to get you to understand a simple thing.
  I'm not complaining that I have to pay maintenance,
  I'm not complaining that I have to pay arrears,
  I'm not defending myself for getting into arrears
  Quite simply and I'm breathless in re-making this basic point :-
  I Do owe arrears -accepted, I DID pay child support
  NO COMLPAINTS THERE
  Simply I'm saying that as of last week I was paying Maintenance AND contributing Tax to the government.
  Ј230 was going to the CSA
  Ј700-800 was going to the exchequer in Tax and NI
  The government was getting taxes off me so I was contributing to the state too helping them to pay for, well maybe single Mothers etc!
  Had Legal and Trade attached my earnings for a reasonable, payable amount, I would have been able to continue to pay child support, pay tax to the Government Pay off my arrears and continue to have a living. Everyone's a winner!!
  INSTEAD
• Can you explain to me why you are in arrears then?
• Black Saturn No. IT'S IRRELEVANT. I won't be going into details of why I have arrears.
  I'm not denying I owe arrears, Its simply that the repayments on those arrears are impossible for me to pay and that now, everybody loses out!
• Just want to add a quick point, Im a single Father with a 2yr old Son living with me, me and my EX get on really well we both share custody etc..
  They did try to sting me with CSA claims etc earlier this year but got that sorted, im not currently working as waiting for my son to get to the top of the nursery waiting list but i can tell you its NO EASIER been unemployed claiming benefits, im currently getting Ј110 Per week (ONLY Ј10 more than you say you will get NOW) and this is just as hard to live on when you have rent, bills, food, all the usual expenses.
  I have to ask you say there are 4 of you now, so does your new partner not work or receive any income?? i fail to see how 4 of you COULD live of Ј90 a week so surely she is getting something even if it is just benefits??
  Belive me you dont want to jack your job in, i hate nopt working, id do anything to go back now its mind numbing, sitting at home all day, or going shopping you end up even worse off when you start that route as its all you can do to stop been bored..
• jonuk
  When I say keep 4 of us I mean me as a single man, My ex wife and 2 kids.
  I'm not saying its easier on the Dole, Believe me been there, got the t-shirt. Its not easy! I'm not after easy, I wanted to be able to continue to work, continue to pay cs and is as simple as that.
  Currently I cannot pay my rent and bills!so I'm forced into the state route:confused:
• You wont get the dole if you leave your job volintarily.
  So instaed of doing the right thing your gonna give up work sponge of the state and deny your children money.
  My god some people have no self respect.