The Child Support Agency

With considerable relief, we all heard on the news that the CSA is going to close. What a disappoint that agency turned out to be.

At one stage it was reported to have cost £12 million of the tax-payers's money to collect £8 million in child support payments!

Of course, it isn't as simple as that. Parents should contribute to the expense of bringing up their children, even after the separation.

But how?
That is the dilema faced by the government. How to insist that absent parents should contribute to the expense of bringing up a child so as to avoid the tax payer - you and me - having to foot the whole bill.

Before the creation of the Child Support Agency,we used to do this in court. A judge would have the power and discretion to decide how much an absent parent should be contributing to the expense of his children's upbringing, and the courts had the power to enforce that decision.

The essential difference between the old system and the CSA was that vital word- DISCRETION. A judge had a duty to consider all the circumstances surrounding the situation and make a decision accordingly. The CSA has to work with rigid mathematical rules.

We wait with bated breath to see what the government will put in place of the CSA. I would just venture to suggest that the new system, whatever it is, must be designed to accept that the raw material involved in the process is human beings, even the classcial 'absent father' and that each family is unique in its history, its means and its needs.



If you are having family problems, contact solicitor Janet Hopkins on 01858 445 480 or James Haworth on 0116 212 1080 today for no obligation free appointment.