GRRRRR Child support crap.....:( (LONG)

Kitt3n, this was DH answer to you:

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The best thing to do is to apply for change of assessment under reason 8. See the guide for this (CSA - The Guide - 2.6.14: Reason 8 - a parent’s income, property, financial resources, or earning capacity) because it is quite lengthy to explain, but in a nutshell what this reason establishes is the person's capacity to pay is as opposed to what his/her taxable income is. Obviously self-employed people are a prime candidate for this because their 'capacity' could very well be much higher then their taxable income because they can write off or hide money quite easily. Any knowledge/evidence of the payer's actual 'income' or assetts would be required. There are offciers that do investigations into income but there is no guarantee that a case will be picked or what order in the priority list the case will take. A result will be achieved a lot faster by going through change of assessment.

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thanks yael and thank you to your husband.... its a battle we are just not goin to win.....
kinda sux We looked at adoption 18mths ago but our solicitor told us it would cost between 10 and 15 grand and its just not the sort of money we have at them moment specially seen we are taking DP ex to court so we can see DstepS more and coz she wont agree to any extra time we have had to transfer it to the federial magistrate court and get hte whole family report done and so on and that is costing us just over the 10 grand mark and dat isnt including the money we paid for the last lot of court stuff we had to pay so we could see DstepS for 36 hours a fortnight

Its just crap.. i spose the next thing i can do is try and find DD father and dat aint gunna be a easy task as i dont know his name or where he is from

Ahwell once again Yael thanks so much for your help and your DH help its greatly appreciaited

Sarah

Sarah, you don't need lawyers to do an adoption. What you do need to do is get in contact with your local Department of Human Services, Adoption and Permanent Care Team. They will advise you whether you fall under the "exceptional circumstances" regime for your DP to adopt your DD. If they consider you to be "exceptional circumstances" then you have to do a family assessment by a psychologist. This WILL be more difficult because you're not married.

Anyway, get in contact with them, not the lawyers. TBH not many lawyers know much about adoption. I've done three. I can't do them now because I'm a barrister!!!

HTH.

Hi Divvy Thanks for the info i will look into it right away i mite see if the DOHS website has any info on it....
We actually spoke to 2 different solcitiors about it one our normal solicitior and one thro a local family care centre and they both said the same thing but i will go and get in contact with the DOHS for sure
Thanks for the info :)

Sarah, I have been following your story and I can't believe how incredibly ridiculous the system is in relation to your situation. I hope you can get special circumstances from DOHS however if you have no joy I would be writing to your federal member of parliament and cc'ing the minister in charge of human services. From what I can see you are being discriminated against and disadvantantaged purely because you do not know who the father of your DD is and that really isn't fair for you or your family.

Thanks Nai
Nice to know wenot the only ones dat think the system is being unfair... I will see how we go with DOHS i just got onto their website and looked at step parent adoption so now i will call them tomorrow and if they cant help i will write a letter and see where dat gets us .....

By wat is written on the DOHS website we should be able to go for the adoption even tho we r not married as one of the requirments is dat you have to be in a stable relastion and have done so for 2 yrs or more which we have and that the "other parent" hasnt had any contact with the child in a few years....
But i will fid out more info tomorrow

OK thsi is starting to get off topic now but just a update
After being on the fone to DOHS and different Solicitors and the family law court
We are able to get a order done>> so the lady i spoke to at legal aide section of CSA told me the wrong info (once again told wrong info by the CSA) We dont have to bemarried to get a consent order done.... the lady that does the adoptions thro DOHS said step parent adoptions rarely happen in Victoria becoz they have very strick guildlines and critirias (sp) and that only about 1-2 a year happen.. Not sure how true but its wat she said... So she told us just to get the order and change DD surname via BDM..... And she also told me that the price we were told regarding adoption was wayyyyyyyyy bout... We were told it would cost us between 10 - 15 grand and the lady said no wayyyy it shouldnt be anymore then 5 grand.....

IM SO OVER BEING TOLD THE WRONG INFORMATION...... Makes me wander wat else we have been told that is wrong....... :(