Hi All

Ok, today I received a letter from the csa for arrears dating back 18 years from 1999-2000 for a sum of £472. My daughter is now 28 years old and earns more money than me. I can't remember details 18 years ago. The only thing I can imagine is I went through a period of unemployment, but as far as I can remember I paid my csa payments.

How in hell can it be after 18 years they come chasing after an 18 year old debt that there is no way I can verify, don't think I own anything 18 years old.

I could really do with some advice on this, I certainly don't want to be coughing up £472 for a debt I know nothing about. Any info on what I should do would be most welcome.

send them a free sar

make them PROVE you owe it.

Thinking about it I don't know how I could be in arrears, if I was unemployed and or working wouldn't the csa have been making their usual DOE? Why do you thing a SAR will be effective, have there been cases where the csa try it on?

Its an absolute disgrace the way the csa hound fathers for payment, no time limit on chasing the debt.

18 years is an inhumane length of time to be chasing up a debt, but its worse than that they can chase csa debt even after death.

They can confiscate a fathers drivers licence or passport if they wish, force a sale of a fathers home to recover debt, call in bailiffs, and even send a father to prison. The whole system is archaic, something you might see in the Victorian era. If capital punishment was still law I'm sure some sicko would be calling that fathers be put to death for non payment.

I phoned the csa today and the woman I spoke to said if I had a Deduction of earnings on my wages then it must have been because I wasn't paying the csa, thats why they put applied a DOE.

Is she right in what she says, was a DOE only applied to wages, back in 2000, when one didn't pay up? From memory I recall a DOE was a automatic process. And wouldn't they have sought to recoup those arrears while I was working instead of ignoring them. From what I recall now they were taking £60 per week for one child, but it later dropped to £40 pw when I pointed out I had my child sleep over several days per week.