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Reducing income by pension contributions – how the CSA decide what is reasonable – if you consider you are paying excessive amounts of money to your ex-partner via CSA how can you legitimately reduce your payments– its ugly but a way of getting increased access perhaps without declaring this and also preventing your ex partner using your cash payments to fight you for increased access where this is being denied and you have to fight it through the courts - the point here is thatthet are financially motivated to prevent access because you pay more when you dont have staying overnight access and use you as a cash machine. What options are available and how do the CSA view this action – My understanding is its perfectly legal and therefore do CSA take the reduced percentage of your net income (in the case of unmarried parents its 15%) or do they have the powers and conviction to assess what maybe considered “reasonable” or indeed just follow the 15% of net income? if you stop paying presumably they have teh powers to take direct from your employer and possibly convict you of a criminal ofference - Please help
You seem to be asking a lot of the questions that I have the experience of 😮
I can say that if you pay 100% of your income into pension, then the CSA will take a dim view - that is exactly what my ex did a few years ago to try to avoid paying any maintenance. In fact, the CSA had to comply, but I applied for a variation and the whole of her contributions were excluded from the calculation, so she was worse off than if she'd tried to pay a reasonable percentage.
I believe that the rules may have changed a little, and very soon, the calculation will be on gross pay, not net pay, so the pensions contribution may not be included anyway.
How much the CSA (or the tribunal) will allow depends on the merits of each case - if you have a new family, and are providing for them within your pension, you will probably be allowed more than if you are simply putting the money away for yourself. If the tribunal think you are putting away money simply to avoid paying maintenance, then they won't be too happy (my ex took her pension out within days of knowing I was applying to the CSA).
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