Who's money is it?

Sometime back, around 2003, I came across a FaCS annual audit and within it I noticed some $695,000 was transferred from a trust account to the CSA. In addition monies from elsewhere (not a trust account) were also allocated to the CSA for wages, rent, etc. I did some investigative ping pong over several months between the CSA and the Finance Department and found out all child support monies went into an interest bearing consolidated trust account.

I did a quick calculation and worked out this $695k would have been equivalent to bank interest gained from yearly average of Child Support monies i.e @ 5% of $1.3 billion. (Interest rates were a lot higher) My calculations may be incorrect, but back when I did this, the CSA held onto CS monies for around 4 weeks before paying the payee. If one was paying $500 a month, around $6,000 per annum, at 5% interest, that's $300 a year or $5,000 over 15 years the government has pocketed of yours or your childs money.

The legislation stated the monies paid in child support to the CSA were to be set aside for the child. Therefor, one would assume these interest dollars actually belong to the children. If this reckoning is correct, then over the life of the Child Support scheme, our children have fraudently been ripped off of millions, possibly billions of dollars. Another point of view is it the payers that have been ripped off millions of dollars, as paid child support monies don't become the child's until received. Interest monies that could have be deducted from a payers payments. Either way, the interest earned was not the governments to do with as it pleases, by law it wasn't theirs.

Argument maybe the government has a right to use these monies to recover costs in part or full. If this is the case, the child support scheme would be considered a user pay system. Or, child support monies are in reality, taxed according to the interest derived from them. As to the user pay theory, the majority of payers do not choose to have CSA involvement and most certainly children don't fill out the forms, it is the payee whom makes the request. How is this taking of moneys from non applicants then considered legitimate?

Since I made my enquiries I have noticed a shift in how child support monies are perceived. Nowdays monies owing are technically seen as a debt owing to the Government, not monies to be set aside for the children. (I wonder today, if it was my enquiries and arguements with the CSA that instigated this change.) No matter how they spin doctor it, the Government continues to make money from child support paid.

I ponder whether a class action by payers, on behalf of the children and/or the payers/children whom have outgrown CSA involvement is possible to recover these stolen monies and return them to their rightful owners..