It's not just absent fathers, there are absent mothers too. I left my ex-husband and he stayed in the marital home (he paid me out for £5K) but for nearly 15 years I'd paid all the bills and he paid for the shopping. As I was the one that wanted to leave I didn't think it right to make him leave the marital home, so I bought a small property for our son and me and we were amicable. During this time I didn't ask for maintenance only for his school dinners to be paid for. We resumed our relationship and I pretty much moved back to the marital home and transferred schools etc for our son who was 5 at the time, and also kept my own house. We discovered at this time that the marriage was actually over and I moved back to my own house, but did leave my son with his dad. The reasons for this was he'd changed his working patterns to weekends and so to make sure that we got equal access I had our son from Thursday - Monday and this meant that neither of us had to worry about childcare. I started a relationship with my now husband and he also started another relationship. This is when the problems started - the access started to get reduced from weekly to three times a week and then fortnightly then once a month. I received a call (whilst on holiday) from the CSA saying that he'd then raised a claim against me and although I wasn't paying maintenance, our son got everything he needed. I provided clothes, shoes, school uniform, etc - and my ex used to ask for these and I would oblige - he earned more than I did. The CSA worked out my payments which left me overdrawn every month (I had childcare for my new child to pay as I have always worked) but they wouldn't listen to anything I had to say. You can't put your point of view across, they don't offer any advice, there's just no speaking to them. I was made redundant and stopped paying immediately. They told me that there was arrears of £400 (all the people that owe thousands) and was told that if I didn't pay the outstanding amount in one go, then they would send in the bailiffs. I had no income, no benefits, my husband was paying all the other bills, including his own maintenance bill, leaving us with nothing. I had no choice other than to use some of my sons savings that I had also been putting away as I knew he wouldn't be getting any of this money. They were having holidays, new car, work on the house done. I didn't go back to work and received a letter from them saying that the case was closed and that he would have to re-apply if he wanted the CSA to obtain maintenance again. We moved away from the area and I have no contact with my son who is now nearly 14. I wrote to my ex saying that I wanted to return to work but couldn't do it if the CSA was involved because I couldn't afford to due to the amount of bills and could we come to some agreement. I never heard anything back from him and as we have a house on the market in the old area, which we are having trouble selling, and also the one that we are renting and these both still have to be paid for I had no choice other than to work. I didn't contact the CSA as I'd received the original letter saying case closed and now they've written to me, with all my employment details, wages, etc right back to last year. They want £47 a week from me - not a vast amount and don't mind paying this at all - but there's obviously going to now be arrears on this - we're paying for two properties - one reduced so much that we'll make nothing from the sale but just to get rid of it, but can't due to the housing market - so two sets of bills, an already large maintenance bill and already working on a budget so that we can afford shopping at the end of the week, I just won't be able to afford the monthly amount and know that they won't accept anything I say and will expect at least the arrears paying off straight away - where do I go from here I ask myself? My only positive thought in this is my son can't wait to leave school and I know he'll do this as soon as his leaving date comes around. I don't want to give his savings up to my ex husband as arrears but if they demand it, what can I do? Do they even take into consideration that maintenance is paid for another child from a previous marraige? I can't seem to find any answers on this one.