Guest Blogger and Solicitor Rachel Baul joined Stowe Family Law in 2004, and is a member of the Law Society’s Family Law Panel. She specialises in all areas of family law and ancillary relief, and has been commended by a number of the firm’s high profile clients.

Rachel Baul

My previous posts about the Child Support Agency and its replacement, C-MEC, drew a number of pointed comments and questions from readers. Thank you to everyone who got in touch.

I would like to emphasise that every case is different and my responses are not intended as substitutes for tailored legal advice. If there are question marks over your case, you should consult a solicitor. However, I very much hope that my answers may be of benefit to questioners and others.

Question: I have recently received the assessment from the CSA. My son’s father has to pay £5 a week – he has lied about his income, and is self employed. He is actually a very successful TV producer who earns at least £50k a year. What can I do to question this? It’s a disgrace and unjust. It reflects a serious loophole in the system and I want to fight it all the way – not just for my son but for other children and their mums. Any advice would be gratefully received.

Rachel says: If you can demonstrate his income, either through paperwork such as proof of contracts or by his standard of living (this may require a private investigator), you can apply to a CSA team that specialises in working out payment calculations for those whose incomes are not easy to ascertain. Unfortunately, when a person’s income is largely cash or fluctuates heavily, it is always difficult to prove that the actual income is greater than the amount disclosed by that person.

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A guest post by Rachel Baul of Stowe Family Law.

Further to my last guest post, which answered some common questions about the CSA, here are ten things that you should know about the changes currently in hand.

The CSA is currently undergoing huge revisions. Later this year it will be phased out and replaced by C-MEC (Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission).  All cases should have been transferred to C-MEC by the end of 2011. C-MEC will become fully operational from 2013-2014.

C-MEC aims to simplify and streamline assessments, and improve the collection process. A number of changes are planned, and he most significant of these are as follows: 

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOji4H3Jgfw [/youtube] 

Where did the justice go?

When I was a pupil at Leeds Girls’ High School, (how many years ago?!!!) each week we had to learn some Shakespeare by heart. The meaning of what we learned was never explained beforehand, and we had to work it out for ourselves. The following day we had to take turns to recite it from memory, with all the meaning we had attributed to it. This was quite difficult to do, but one speech fascinated me more than the others. I have never forgotten learning Portia’s role as the male lawyer in the Merchant of Venice, and her words about the “quality of mercy” in the law. This famous speech argues that there is room for moral obligations within the law’s confines.

I think Portia fashioned my own approach to the law, and fired up my enthusiasm for becoming a lawyer. I liked her clever arguments. I liked her understanding of justice because it is mine too.  “Justice” can often mean something completely different to two people caught up on opposing sides of the same case. Justice is about more than administration; it is about tempering the application of law with mercy, to bring about the right result. This is how the law is applied within the English legal system, in both the civil and criminal courts. It is a system within which I have been privileged to work, and I love it.

However, reading The Times about the new reforms to the Child Support Agency, I wondered for the umpteenth time when the principles of mercy and justice will come into play.

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