It’s all over the BBC and other news channels. CSA is being abolished. Letters are being sent out today to single parents explaining the changes. But if you want to now more now have a look at Gingerbreads interactive post on it.
Under the old system many single parents could use the CSA to calculate and sort out the payments. Now it will be encouraged that the parents work it out between them. If parents are unable to do this then there is still someone they can turn to for help. The Child Maintenance Service can help you but to the tune of £20 for each registration to use the service and then a 20% fee is added to the maintenance payment with the receiving parent paying 4% to get the money.
The reason for the change is that the old system didn’t work and cost £74 million per annum to run. But I must admit I am failing to see how this is better. Yes the old system didn’t work but least some parents where getting money. Now if there is any hostility or if there are parents who don’t want or think they shouldn’t pay will now have to pay more. What if the absent parent wants to pay but the other parent wants to go through the system? The willing ‘to pay’ absent parent has to pay £20 registration then a further 20% on top. Is that fair?
I know it takes two create a life and two should pay for the child but when a divorce happens its not always amicable especially not at the start. This to me seems to put more pressure on an already volatile subject and situation.
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The Child Support Agency (CSA)
- The CSA was set up in the early 1990s to calculate and enforce maintenance payments from parents who do not have sole care of their children
- For the agency to be involved, one of the parents must have requested it
- The rollout of the new Child Maintenance Service officially began in December 2012
- The government says new Child Maintenance Service will use HM Revenue & Customs data to process applications and make payments more quickly than the old CSA service, thus preventing the build-up of arrears.
- The new service will review the financial circumstances of the parent paying maintenance annually to ensure levels of payment are fair, accurate and up-to-date
Source : Department for Work and Pensions[/box]
To be honest, I’ve always found the CSA useless anyhow. My ex-husband has run rings around them. It’s very hard to get money out of someone who doesn’t want to pay, no matter what system is used and most of these kind of men will continue to exploit the women they used to be married to, just because they can, because like the feeling of power it gives them. They don’t think about the children at all – how they suffer when their mum does and how much harder it makes being as good a parent as we’d all like to be.