CSA, ex didn't inform them of payrises

My ex decided to play ostrich during the divorce and especially the financial stuff.

Finally got him back in court after one non appearance and Judge found in my favour with the Consent Order stuff and he has now fulfilled those parts.

He was OK at the beginning with the CSA and filled in forms and I was being paid within 4 weeks back in 2005. Then he put head in sand and never told them about increases. It was only through doing various monetary things I realised he hadn't informed them so got a new assessment.

Now I am taking him through small claims court for the non paid amount plus interest because CSA can't do anything, and he is trying the wriggle factor again, saying he kept them informed. Have Subject Access Requested CSA just to give the whole story. So now writing legal stuff.

Has anyone else ever taken ex to court would love to know how you got on. And I will keep everyone informed on the outcome.

Forgot to say that in the 5 years he had a 33% rise in take home pay, more than £100 per week

Thing with the CSA is you're not required to tell them aboutg changes of circumstances unless asked in which case you must provide the requested info.

Your ex has, unfortunately, done nothing wrong in not telling the CSA about his pay rises. Now that you are aware of them you can ask them to review the assessment but it wont be back dated.

I think the lesson with this is that it's worth asking for an annual re-assessment as people's circumstances do change and not everyone wants to admit that.

Good luck with the small claims - I think there are a lot of us here who would be interested to hear the outcome of that.

What surprises me here is why it can't be done through the tax system. I'm sure there could be a way of flagging things by using the NI number.

(Probably being very naive here and I'm sure really it would be a nightmare to implement.)

Good luck with this.

Parents are required to notify the CSA if they have a change of income.
www.csa.gov.uk/en/case/change-of-income.asp

It does seem that they will only reassess once they have the information.

you'd think the HMRC and the DWP/CSA would automatically cross-reference with the submission of the P60 each year or the P45 when issued (and probably other Ps I don't know about!). But they don't. It's a sad fact of life that either you rely on the NRP to be honest and do the right thing or you make a note to ask for a re-assessment every now and again. I think if asked by the CSA to give a reason, it's perfectly reasonable to say it's been a year, a cost of living payrise will have happened. If it hasn't, you've lost nothing at all.

Emma6607 wrote:

Parents are required to notify the CSA if they have a change of income.
www.csa.gov.uk/en/case/change-of-income.asp

It does seem that they will only reassess once they have the information.

No they're not! The only things a NRP MUST tell the CSA is if they change their home address, this is a recent change. If a NRP pays via DEO they MUST tell CSA if there is a change of employer.

Any other changes it's up to the NRP to tell CSA if they want to. Unless thery think its going to make their assessment go down they are unlikely to.

When the CSA was first set up the idea was that there would be regular reviews. They couldn't cope and reviews only seem to take place when one of the parties asks for a change of circumstances review, CSA will then request the relevant information which then MUST be supplied, a CoC review is carried out and if certain tolerance levels are reached a new assessment will be payable.

Not always worth asking for a review just based on the fact that an annual pay award will have made NRP income go up because if on CS1 all allowances will have gone up to and if on CS2 payrise would have to be quite big to reach the tolerance level for a new assessment. If anything else had changed in the formula, such as housing costs, pension contributions it is just as likely to make the amount payable to go down which would be very unfortunate if you had asked for the review!

Having had many years experience of the CSA my advise to anyone would be try to avoid using them and come to a private agreement if you possibly can.

Regarding using the info from inland revenue etc that seems logical but when have you known anything done by government to be simple and logical?

Not sure what the OP is hoping to gain from small claims as if the NRP has paid the assessed amount then that is all they were due to pay.

The system is wrong and not in the childs interest!