Durham Legal Services

Need advice on a Child Maintenance Service matter.
Call 01207 693966 to make your appointment. Or visit www. childmaintenanceadvice. co. uk /vouchers. shtml

PAGE MISSION AND RULES

1. This page is a free information board provided by Durham Legal Services to inform parents about changes to child support legislation on all three CSA systems. It is designed to provide this help for any user in a non-threatening environment and the webmaster will monitor and remove posts at our discretion.

2. It is not a forum to post details about your case. We do welcome questions on the interpretation of law in any of the posts we make and we will endeavour to clarify the law. Sometimes we will invite a parent to contact Durham Legal Services to achieve this. Again, this is a free service but it is strictly by invitation only.

3. We operate a zero tolerance to any post or attack on any particular parent group or organisation. Any such post will be deleted and the individual banned from using the site.

Why it make sense to get professional legal advice

In this age of social media, people with a CSA problem often feel they no longer need to seek “old-fashioned” legal advice. Instead, they simply look up a Facebook group, join to get the free advice and think the problem will go away. In certain simple circumstances and in the long term this may resolve the issue but the reality is they are very often heading down a road which only adds to their problems.

Most Facebook groups are made up from people who have their own CSA problems and they offer advice based on their private experiences. However, they are often on there in the first place because they have had problems and their own cases have gone wrong! Apart from the fact that a one size answer does not fit all, there is often little or no understanding of what the legislation is meant to do and it often comes down to two warring factions being the PWC or the N. RP. Every single CSA case is different so from an advice prospective this is the totally the wrong place to start.

If you had toothache, would you want to spend your time discussing how terrible the shops are for selling things that rot your teeth and how you can sue them or would you want someone just to sort out the decay and stop the pain? That is what professional legal advice does. Firstly the problem is identified (the rotten tooth) and the solution is put in place (the tooth is repaired). At this point if you want to find out what went wrong (too much sugar) then that the time to do it is after the problem has been resolved, not at the start adding years of misery.

At Durham Legal Services UK we also understand that many parents would seek professional advice if they could afford it. Speak to us and we will try and help you get the right advice at an affordable price.