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FOOL SCHOOL
Did you know that there are now an estimated 1.6 million lone parents in the UK? It's a lot, isn't it? And 90% of them are lone mothers, about half of whom are on benefit of some kind.
It's been 10 years since the Child Support Act was introduced and it's been accepted for a very long time that the whole thing was a complete mess. The Bill was whizzed through Parliament with only the skeleton principle -- that absent parents should financially support their children -- being debated. It was left to the civil servants to sort out the details and being lovers of red tape, the result was a bureaucratic nightmare. So much so that the Child Support Agency spent more time dealing with re-assessments and appeals than chasing those who were in arrears or refusing to pay.
New laws governing the way child support is calculated have now finally been passed by Parliament. The system has been greatly simplified, but whether it's for the better won't be known until the changes are actually implemented and individuals start feeling the effect of the new method of calculation and the penalties for not complying.
Key Changes
Briefly, absent fathers will be required to pay 15% of their net income for a single child, 20% for two and 25% for three children or more. The maximum income that will be taken into account will be capped at £2,000 net income a week. If the father has a new family then similar allowances will be made for each child in his second family, including stepchildren. Rates of 15%, 20% and 25% will be deducted from the non-resident parent's net income and only the balance will be subject to the standard rates for the first family.
Those who don't or won't pay risk losing their driving licence and if they lie or refuse to provide information, they could be fined up to £1,000. Late payments will also lead to fines. Until now fathers who lived abroad could not be chased, but the new law now ensures that non-resident parents who work for a UK-based employer can still be held accountable.
Potential Problems
The new rules are certainly much easier to understand, but there are some caveats that have been introduced which are likely to cause as many rows between parents as the Act of 1991 managed to do.
For a start, the income of the resident mother will not be taken into consideration, nor will that of a new partner. You might think that's fair enough -- just because the mother earns a fair whack, that doesn't negate the responsibility owed by the absent father. However, the lone mother could earn huge amounts each year and still demand, and be entitled to, up to 25% of the absent father's income.
Equally, the father could be a millionaire with a vast income but will never be required to pay more than £26,000 a year even if he can afford much more.
What's worse is that these maintenance payments can be reduced on a sliding scale depending on how often that absent father sees the child. For example, if the child stays for 175 nights or more throughout the year, the payments could be halved. Again, that's fair enough on the face of -- it if the father is looking after the child for half the year, then he should only pay half. But what if the resident mother can't afford to lose the full maintenance payment? It would be in her interests to deny contact and in his to pursue it. Won't that lead to yet more arguments between the parents?
These factors also mean that, if both parents shared residence of the children AND earned exactly the same amount, the parent regarded as "absent" would still have to pay the parent with the legal Residence Order.
It seems to me that the new laws will cause just as much resentment as the previous law. And while there's no doubt that changes to the Child Support laws are long overdue and should improve things for the lone mother who needs financial help from the father, the new system is not exactly encouraging for fathers who already do their duty,
Still, at least it will be transparent and easier to implement. This in turn should free up CSA resources sufficiently so they can focus on those fathers who flatly refuse to face up to their responsibilities.
The Child Support Agency
Here a few basic statistics released by the Child Support Agency:
The CSA is required to use a specific formula to calculate an absent parent's financial responsibilities towards their children. It's been tinkered with over the years because of protests made by those subjected to the formula, so it is certainly a great deal fairer to the absent parent than it once was. And, the proposed changes scheduled for implementation any time soon will actually result in many absent parents paying less than they might have under the current rules.
The above statistics show that nearly half of absent parents -- mostly fathers -- provide the legally required financial support for their children in accordance with their means as assessed by the CSA. These responsible fathers do their best by their children and comply fully with the law. However, they also illustrate that 52% of absent parents -- mostly fathers -- do not.
It is surely right in ALL cases that an absent parent should contribute financially -- to the best of his ability -- towards their child's upbringing. So why do such a large proportion fail to do so?
In some cases it may be that they don't feel they can afford the CSA's assessment of their finances. Or, perhaps, because they don't care about their ex-partner anymore, they don't care about the children they produced together. But, according to the organisation Families Need Fathers, it seems more likely to be the result of the emotional fallout of parents splitting up.
Unfortunately, both parents will still have the weapons they've been using against each other for decades.
The father, for whatever reason, decides to make life difficult for the mother by flatly refusing to pay child support or by delaying maintenance payments. Or he simply stops working so he literally has no money with which to pay.
The mother, for whatever reason, decides to make it very difficult for the father to see the children. So she flouts the Access Order that outlines the father's rights to regularly see his children by slamming down the phone whenever he calls, or making sure there's no-one home when he turns up to collect the children.
It's a chicken and egg situation and those who suffer the most are, of course, the children.
Parliament's solution to these eternal problems was, of course, to give the CSA strong powers to deduct the required child support directly from a father's salary via his employer to ensure it gets to the mother. And to give the courts the ultimate power to imprison the mother if she refused to comply fully with the access rights that have been granted to the father.
Does the CSA use its powers? Yes. After all, we're only talking money here.
Do judges use their powers? No. We're talking about taking the mother away from the children she's supposed to be caring for.
That's the way the cookie crumbles at the moment and such unfairness to fathers can only be changed by lobbying Parliament en masse, by joining organisations such as Families Need Fathers, and fighting for some sort of workable solution. Just as women once had to fight for financial support from the absent father.
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