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A dad hanged himself hours after received a letter ordering him to pay £11,000 in backdated child support for his grown up son.

Ian Sandywell was said to have been 'crying and upset' after receiving the order and texted his 22 year-old son Ben: "Delete me out of your life please. I'm going to hang myself."

Hours later the car salesman's wife Jo-ann Balsamo, found him dead in their garage when she returned home from work.

An inquest into his death heard the normally "laid back" 45-year-old had been upset by a demand that he pay the money back within two years.

He received the letter from the Child Support Agency, requesting back-payments for his son on November 11 last year.

Mrs Balsamo, of Silverdale, Stoke-on-Trent, said he had called her at work at 12.30pm about the demand for the money.

She said: "He was upset. He was crying. He said he was concerned about the amount of money they wanted on a monthly basis, which was £520. It was stressful for him.

"I was surprised how upset he was. We had letters before and he was going to go through the appeals process. By the end of the conversation he had calmed down and we said goodbye normally."

The inquest heard Mr Sandywell had also called his parents to say he was worried about the letter.

(Image: Twitter)

He exchanged around 40 text messages with Ben that day, but shortly before 2.30pm he sent him a text saying: "Delete me out of your life please. I'm going to hang myself."

His last message, minutes later, read: "I'm sorry Ben, I love you."

Mrs Balsamo, who had been married to Mr Sandywell for six years, said her daughter had returned to the house from work that afternoon to find the door unlocked, the lights on and TV paused, but there was no sign of her step dad.

When she had returned from work at 7pm she checked the house before opening the garage, where she found her husband.

Paramedics were called but Mr Sandwell was pronounced dead at the scene. A post-mortem found the amount of alcohol in his system would have been twice the drink-drive limit.

Mrs Balsamo said her husband was usually "laid-back" and had never shown any suicidal tendencies.

Ian Smith, coroner for Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire, recorded a conclusion of suicide.

He said: "Ian had been concerned about a very substantial Child Support Agency debt.

"He had engaged in a number of texts with his son. He said some rather silly things, including that he would hang himself. I don't think anyone would have believed him for a minute."