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Hello all, I am in a quandary like most fathers on this site. I left my ex wife nearly 4 years ago and I have a 6 year old daughter. I have paid child maintenance from the day I left. My ex has never let my daughter have an overnight stay with me and recently I have had less and less contact with her. She has refused me access over the last 2 months. I have considered mediation and also going directly to Court to obtain a contact order, however I know for a fact that neither of these 2 options will work and nothing will change. I have now come up with a radical idea of stopping maintenance payments and keeping what I should pay into a separate bank account. This way once I do start getting access I will pay the full amount back. So in essence I am just withholding the money with the intention of paying later. This is the only way which I can get my ex's attention and get more access to my daughter. What are you're views on this? At the minute the maintenance is just a voluntary agreement between us both (CSA not involved). What could be the repercussions of withholding the pay if CSA get involved? Could CSA then request payments backdated to when I left? Thanks
Hi Crew,
If you don't pay through the CSA and they aren't involved then you won't get any come back from that...if she opens a claim for maintenance with them that would only start for the day she applies to the CSA.
Maintenance and contact are considered as completely separate issues and it can happen that a parent has to pay but doesn't have any contact. If you go to court the judge won't be interested in the financial side of things either.
However, if you withhold payments then the impact of that might have repercussions on your daughters quality of life, if mother doesn't have as much disposable income.
To state that you know for a fact that mediation or a court order won't work is a very sweeping statement! It does work for the vast majority of people, what you have to remember when you read the sad and sometimes desperate stories from denied Dads on here, these only form a very small minority....most families manage to sort things out and we don't hear from them because there are no problems. I just don't think you should discount the options open to you without at least trying them first.
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