Would anyone like to sign a petition i have just read?

Ollie	Hi,have signed it & also signed one to stop local hospitals from being shut.

vdv_desantnik	Regarding this issue yes I feel that absent parents should pay maintenance however take the following case into account:- Last year I split from my girlfriend and was still paying maintenance and buying things for our daughter. Then she turned nasty and phoned the CSA and said I wasnt giving her any money or anything for the baby. I was hit with a deduction from earnings order that took 40% of my earnings and after paying the bills and rent I was left with Â£50 to last me a month. In order to avoid starving to death I ended up going through bins, poaching, shoplifting and picking wild plants so that I had enough to eat. I was unable to afford to heat my flat and had to sit wrapped in blankets. and out of two payments totalling nearly Â£500 my ex g/f got Â£95. If the government were planning to set up a fair system that takes things like this into account then I would sign your petition

mick t	this is less about supporting children and more about the feminist lobby persecuting men. A friend of mine got divorced and he had custody of the children. Although his ex had a well paid job and kept the family allowance, he still had to pay her maintenance. His income was reduced due to his child care commitments, and he and the children had to manage on what was left. This was the ruling of the CSA. It took 2 years of court battles to get the maintenance payments cancelled. He never got the family allowance though. They should be called the child impoverishment agency

Northern Lad	I do not wish to insult your intelligence. But why? WHY?

holly_baker20	Sorry, i agree with SAR 13. The Law weighs heavily in favour of the mother in financial settlements and in my opinion needs to be seriously addressed. Its quite easy for the following scenario to occur and often does. A wife after having a child, has an affair, decides she wants the marriage to end. Claims nonsense reasons or engineers issues for a divorce. The father is then ordered to pay maintenance ( further pressured by the ex wife's emotional blackmail) until the child is dependent, whilst having to watch another man enjoy quality time his child. Hrmmmm...something not quite right there! Not quite sure what the answer is, but certainly something needs to be done. Perhaps the father should pay what the state benefit would be for a child or pay for child minding so the mother could enjoy a working career. We (women) wanted equality and independence, I for one, wouldn't want to benefit from a marriage financially and certainly wouldn't want to benefit from a divorce financially.

ladylafemme1	i will sign it

K Marx iii	Anything to do with the UK govt at the moment is a con. Criminal war. Trying to pervert the BBC. Trying to pervert the Police investigation into Cash for honours. Trying to pervert the press and public. Its evil!

NoName	i will sign, make it easy you stupid tart if you wanna ruck sumone, get a bloke to rule, to rule coz we do, providing you chicks agree xxx

SAR13	Its a bit more complicated than that,I think you are naive and uneducated it is not that simple, sorry. I was not being rude.My wife told me to leave because she did not love me any more and had met someone else, after she had started going out with her new found friends, while I stayed in all the time with our handicapped son I left her with my handicapped son with the house we were buying I give her the lot, I still have my son 5 years later every school holiday,even though I have remarried and bringing up 3 children of my wife whos ex does not pay anything toward because he is on the sick,and we have a son of our own and live in a rented house because the house prices have gone through the roof.While my ex wife as remarried and just bought a 250,000 pound house. Demonising absent parents is not funny, 9 years playing with paper work not funny,people commiting suicide not funny.Silly partition not funny,to get people to sign it when they have not got the full facts of a very complicated issue not funny. Sorry ,sensitive issue,I can't email because I do not contact people over the net. Nothing personal sorry.

laffersand	i have done this and really truly hope it will help absent parents need to be more responsible to their kids

wyldfyr48	I don't live in UK. Clinton started tracking down "Deadbeat parents" in the USA. He also made them start paying.

charlie	I agree and have signed the petition regards charlie

sjsosullivan	I'm with Jill, on this. If I were a subject of the Crown, I would sign it in a heartbeat.

Jill R	I am not from the UK, but an absent parent should pay support for their children. I cannot believe that the UK doesn't already have something to that effect.