CMS and Court Orders - Your Experience?

[madwelder89]

Hi all,

I have been looking around here for a while now and have read many of your stories and advice to each other.

I am a divorced father of two young girls. Went through the whole routine of getting a clean break Financial Court Order so that I would not be financially anchored to the X. May have been a little naive on some aspects as I did not take into account how ruthless and biased CMS is against the non-resident parent, and that X's narcisstic tendencies seem to know no limit...

My Court Order contains clauses that the CMS should take into account all the mortgage payments I had made prior to the house being sold, and also that neither party had any intention to contact CMS for 12 months from the date of the Order.

I was quite happy with that Order, in the hope that I would be able to have an adult conversation with the X following the sale of the house, to agree payments going forwards. For the avoidance of doubt, I paid maintenace to the X for the children from the moment I left her, and continued to pay the mortgage in full so the children were not made homeless.

Well, house gets sold, and within days, X is claiming that I am in debt to her, owing her so much. Same again the following month, along with the threat that if I didn't pay the debts to her, that she would contact CMS within 7 days. Also worth mentioning that she refused any arrangement changes at this point as a result of being "owed" money.

Rather than getting caught in another of her one sided immature text rows, I sat back and waited. Day 8, I miss a phone call from DWP. Sure enough, she has contacted them, despite claiming she wanted to do things amicably - which in her world means refusing to have an adult conversation with me and doing things her way. I had a long and fairly productive conversation with CMS, explained the whole situation, and in particular her haste to contact them despite the Order clauses. With some difficulty I uploaded a copy of the Order to the CMS portal - the automated system refused most of my attempts to upload a PDF because it "contained" something other than words and letters.

A few days later I get a call back from the CMS case worker. Bad news. Despite his recommendation, the CMS "legal team" says the Order doesn't stand because the child maintenance clauses have not been signed off by a judge. This is absolute nonsense as the Order has been submitted digitally to the family court, an automated system, but it is sealed and filed. More importantly, however you wish to interpret the legal jargon - both parties signed and agreed to the clauses. I told the case worker that it is absolutely ridiculous that the CMS is enabling the X to break the clauses of the Order.

I have read others' horror stories of CMS on here, and I am going to take this further - my first port of call will be writing to my local MP about the absolute disregard for legal documents that the CMS, a government organisation, has. I would be interested if anyone else has had a similar experience with regards to submitting legal documentation to the CMS and it being ignored?

Many thanks

MW

 

[Resolute]

On not on an exactly equivalent issue, I had a similarly ridiculous decision from CMS. I lodged several "dissatisfactions" and some "mandatory reconsiderations" with them. Made lots and lots of phone calls to explain the situation again and again. Eventually, I got to the end of the road on persuading them to make a sensible decision internally. I lodged an appeal with the tribunal, you have to wait 6-9 months for a hearing. During this time I continued calling them as things came up and explained the history on each occasion. Finally, I got a case worker who had enough common sense to recognise CMS was in the wrong. They offered to make everything right if I agree to withdraw the tribunal. I said if the issue is resolved first, I'd be happy to withdraw. They agreed, all sorted.

I do not think they would have considered changing their mind before I had the reference for an upcoming tribunal hearing.

 

[MagicJ]

This is such a crazy situation but seems to be common dealing with Local & Central government organisations.

@Resolute I assume each reference to explaining history was post letters from CMS telling you to pay?

Glad you sorted it, good advice but as with every other aspect of our cases, seems like it also needs persistence with responding and chasing them up!

 

[Resolute]

@Resolute I assume each reference to explaining history was post letters from CMS telling you to pay?

More or less accurate assumption.

It was a mess and took up so much time to get nowhere. But, you have to keep at it and complain each time. Take notes of each call, name of the person you speak to and what they promise. I had so many broken promises to sort things out and was given the wrong advice more times than I can remember.

They rely on most people giving up, they make giving up feel like the only sane option at times.

 

[madwelder89]

@Resolute, thanks for sharing, some good advice there too. I have read about the "mandatory reconsideration" and will dispute the decisions CMS has made. Cannot allow this department to get away with bullying non-resident parents.