If you are owed child support payments from your ex-partner and are not satisfied with the actions and any delays taken by the Child Support Agency (CSA), we can help you.
Generally, it is CSA which should take actions to collect the child support payments for you. But in our experience, even a case on their priory list was not handled promptly from the client’s point of view.
We can contact and deal with CSA on your behalf and chase the child support debt against your ex-partner through the Courts. Our standard procedure is to obtain judgment against your ex-partner and apply for his/her bankruptcy.
There are some consideration before you decide to take this step:
- Sometimes, the ex-partner liable for child support payments responds after a letter of demand is sent to him;
- A non-legal consideration is your relationship with the ex-partner, i.e. whether even though you had separated, you still wish to remain in an amicable relationship with her/him;
- If the ex-partner does not care whether he is bankrupted, you may not want to spend the time and costs of pursuing the debt. The child support debt would not be extinguished even after the bankruptcy so in theory, the ex-partner may never get out of bankruptcy subject to the circumstances of each case;
Our costs for the first step of obtaining default judgment start from $1,500 plus GST plus disbursements.
There are various other ways to enforce the judgment than bankruptcy such as garnishee order, attachment order against wages and CSA’s overseas travel bans but we find that the bankruptcy application (or its threat) quite often brings about the desired outcome quickly.
Our costs for the second step of applying for bankruptcy start from $3,000 plus GST plus disbursements.
If you require our assistance, please contact us for a confidential discussion.
