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Hi there. I have been separated from my ex for 8 years. We have always had shared care of our two children, roughly 45% with me and 55% with her. We both have very good incomes, well above average and she probably earns rather more than me. She referred our case to the CSA about a year and a half after separation despite me always paying every penny she had asked for. I have since always paid the figure specified by the CSA despite this not taking her income into account at all. Currently this amounts to £800 per month. There is of course no way she spends this much money on the children. So as well as being able to abdicate her own financial responsibility to our children she can use a government agency to make a healthy profit out of me.
I was advised by several lawyers that there was no point in taking the matter to court, partly because the courts are now reluctant to make rulings on child maintenance with the CSA in place and partly because there is a 12 month break point whereby the CSA can disregard any court order once 12 months have elapsed (in contravention of a key recommendation in Dir David Henshaw's report).
To my mind the CSA calculation is fundamentally unfair and inequitable because it only takes one parent's income into account. The overwhelming majority of parents who are disadvantaged by this are male and the CSA is thus in breach of the Gender Equality Duty and various articles of ECHR. The discrimination is compounded by the CSA's powers. If a father refuses to financially support his children he can have his driving license confiscated or be imprisoned. If a mother wants to refuse to financially support her children she can get the CSA to do this for her.
I understand that the CSA are changing the way they deal with equal shared care cases so that they will not be able to act in these situations. This is of course going to disadvantage parents who have very low income and ex-partners who have a high income. It will provide a very substantial financial incentive for mothers to maintain unequal care arrangements. This inequity could not occur if parents had a reciprocal and balanced financial responsibility to each other for the time that they each have care of their children.
There seems to be a fundamental numeracy issue here. You cannot work out how much somebody with financial responsibility for something should be paying for it without taking their income into account! With a father having care of two children for every other weekend and one day during the week, and equal income to his ex, she will get approximately 35% more net income than him after transfer of child maintenance despite research showing that he will already carry near 50% of the costs of looking after the children. This seems crazy!
My purpose in putting this post up here is to ask if I am missing something? Is there a fault in my logic here?
Does anyone know if the CSA maintenance calculation has been the subject of a judicial review or Supreme Court case?
Any views most welcome.
Not that I am aware of. The current rules were put into place in 2003 - before that, the maintenance payments were even more harsh and the thing that is most unfair is that anyone originally assessed prior to 2003 cannot be reassessed under the new rules so is stuck paying the higher amounts.
With regards to the sexual inequality, that is not the doing of the CSA - they follow the rules for the Resident Parent and the Non-resident parent whichever [censored] each happens to be - if there is any sexual inequality, then it is with the courts who decide who has residence - the CSA simply deal with the consequences of those rulings. In my case, I have residence, and when they were able, the CSA pursued my ex as ruthlessly as they would if the situation had been reversed.
While I appreciate that your ex may not spend the money directly on your children, if you had stayed together, a proportion of your income would have gone towards the children, either directly or indirectly - when you split, then in a way, the children should expect that your contribution to their welfare should continue. I have no argument that some ex's see the maintenance as a "cash cow", but really the fault there doesn't lie with the CSA, it's with the ex.
The sexual inequality IS the fault of the CSA when they fail to take into account the gender inequality between parents who pay maintenance and those who do not (96% male and 4% female). They are obliged to take this inequality into account under the Gender Equality Duty.
Under the Equality Act it's called Indirect Gender Discrimination when you could apply a policy to both genders but actually you apply it to people who share a particular characteristic, in this case being a 'non-resident parent' (a meaningless and offensive term when one has shared care) who are more likely to be of the same gender. If they said only people under the height of 5 ft 10 should pay maintenance that would be Indirect gender Discrimination because it would discriminate against women.
The situation is compounded by the fact that expenditure on children does not rise in line with income. Parents in the top 25% of income only spend 20% more on their children than parents in the bottom 25%. The CSA calculation falls apart when you take this and the relative expenditure in shared care situations into account. I think they do this because it all goes down on the same 'amount collected per amount spent' balance sheet. It can help to make it look like they are doing their job when they are not.
I am lucky. I have an income which allows me to have a good quality of life despite this. I feel sorry for the guys who cannot afford to have more or less equal care of their kids because of the discrimination of the CSA.
I have no objection to paying maintenance for my children. What I object to is that my ex does not.
...I believe their are some dodgy dealings going on within the CSA "organization". There seems to be a drive to attach earnings recently with no notification of their intention to do so. Have a read of a website called deadbeatdadsassociation.co.uk. Its rather a crude website but they make some startling and thought provoking claims!
I think you've made some valid points, there are small pockets of people trying to fight the injustices of the CSA....CSAhell is another but there are too few voices , its a whisper of discontent rather than a roar of injustice. Unfortunately apathy is a reality of modern life, perhaps the disintegration of "community " has something to do with that...
Yes. Apathy is a barrier to action, fear is another. The main reason I have failed to address this nonsense is the fear that if my actions become public then I will be sworn at in front of my children and have my care of them curtailed by my ex. Both have repeatedly happened but maybe I need to realise that nothing I do will change her actions.
The people who are ultimately responsible for this nonsense are the MPs who voted for this pile of nonsense. The only way it will change is if they realise that they will be voted out if they continue to breach the basic human rights of their constituents.
Lobby your MP now
I am going to see mine next week.
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