Legal document before payment of child maintenance

Hi - can someone please give me some advice please on the following. A court order was made in Jan 12 which stated CM to be paid at £330 per month. I was aware I could go to CMS in jan 13 but payments were regular so left things for a quiet life. In jan this year, daughter changed number of nights with other parent, and as he would not adjust payments I asked CMS to do assessment. Not received any CM from ex whilst assessment taking place but now have their calculations which are based on his salary of £50,000 pa not £40,000 as he told me. However before paying the arrears, he has just said the following :

. I have been told that it would be advisable for us to draw up and both sign a document that confirms any money transferring from my account to yours is indeed for and agreed to be for child

Has anybody else been asked to sign a document of this nature and why would he want me to do this ??

Any comments much appreciated.

Thanks

Sounds a bit odd as surely all he needs to do is give the payment a decriptor of child maintenance so it shows on as this on bank statements.

Ummm I know - that''s my thought too so I am suspicious of signing legal document - he tries every trick in the book so I have to be cautious maybe I should just refuse and get CMS to collect although I realise in June we will incur costs for this.

Hello Pianogirl

I agree with maisymoos: do not sign anything. it is not necessary and golly only knows what the details of any document your X puts in front of you will actually be. (My ex made 1 CM payment before the old CSA became involved and he simply gave it the ID of CSA (it was an online bank payment) and so was registered in his and my bank accounts as such)

However giving your x the benefit of the doubt, he may not realise that it is as simple as that i.e. giving a reference ID to the arrears payments as ''Child maintenance''. He may be trying to ''covere his back'' ...everyone gets all busines like in these sitation and it is scary they used to be our cosest hummm? i felt that too)

To avoid getting his ''back up'' (which is very easy in these situations'' i would just state that you have been advised that this is what he needs to do, (so he doesn''t think you are directly showing him no trust by not signing his documnt) and that you have been expressely advised that no paper needs/shoud be signed as the legality would not hold and the CMS is to be only provider of bining docs in the CM cases.

Just between You and I, the CMS doesn''t do arrears. they wil only start computing monies as being due from 2-6 weeks after you have applied (i.e from the time they have notified him formally and have formally done their calcs)... which means that technically if your X does not pay his current arrears, he will not be made to do so...

Hopefully i have not confused you?
SIC

That is really sound advice - thank you. When he sends me the legal document tomorrow I will respond as you have suggested. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he may be covering his own back but ummm really, would I sign a legal document drawn up by him - no !

My concern is, and which has not been made clear by CMS is how much they will ''collect'' if I ask them to collect. They said they can only collect up to 3 missed payments, but the arrears would be covered ??? Their effective date is 19th January. He has used every trick in the book to delay, promised to pay when calculation was done, and today he tells me he will pay after I sign legal document

Good evening pianogirl

The CMS was really good at collecting the monies that were due from the effective date....it did take them from november (application date) till February for me to get anything (first payment) ... but i did receive it... the first payment was large (to account for december and january) and my ex was hyperventillating calling me all names when he had that to pay.. but he had been pre warned the month before!

In my case the CMS collected no arrears whatsoever (16 months i had, no less) and only started counting from 2 weeks after informing my X (4 weeks after i first contacted them).

May be you could call them back and dot the ''Ts'' (or is it the ''Is''?)... meaning ask the person at the other end for details of exactly when payments will be due by, when the official schedule of payments will be sent to you and finally the advisors'' name (sometimes they do not record things as accurately as you may wish so it helps to have a name to link a statement to)....

Don''t worry about your X, He will indeed try every trick as he knows that once the CMS is involved it is harder to blackmail you on a monthly basis on the CM payments and also difficult to not pay the true amount due... the week of first payment, i ''earned'' two weeks of abuse and threats from my lovely X (Just ignored him and took pleasure in paying for school clubs, playdates, birthday presies that month without having to tighten the belt too much)....


....and i''m breathing... you will too
(((hugs)))

PS. please note they only pay in arrears meaning that with your effective date January 19th, the first paymeny is due in February 19th (i.e. in your actuallaccount it is likely 7-14 days later) and if they haven''t sorted all the admin, you may not receive an actual paymeny until March but it will include the January CM amount too (all in all, based on your effective date, you have up to April 19th to get the CSA payments all organised and resumed (to collect all monies due since january 19th)... i hope i''m making sense?

SIC

Thank you Sadie in Cheshire



I had forgotten how wonderful wikivorce was.! It got me through the most horrendous divorce 2 years ago and I''ve come back under a different user name

I''m done with being bullied kids asking for cm to be paid each month, he said he would pay when CMS did calculation and now he says I''ll pay when you sign my legal document - err no! I''ve never heard of such a document and cannot incur legal costs to check it out. Divorce for me alone without his fees was £50k +. We actually got divorced twice because he put a Petition on me after mine so two nisi''s etc etc sad! So you can understand my concern about signing a legal document drawn up by him.

I''ll tactfully reply tomorrow when it''s sent but I''m not signing. If the CMS can''t recover full amount I''ll have to live with it but I am so uncomfortable with what he is suggesting and I feel is totally unnecessary.