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Does the Government Help with Child Maintenance?

CMS - Fit for Use?

By Clare ScanlanPublished 7 years ago 6 min read
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In 2016, there were 2.9 million single parent families in the UK, according to the Office of National Statistics. In 86% of these, the single parent was the mother. According to Gingerbread, only 52% of these mothers receive any money at all from the fathers of their children. In many cases, the amount of money these fathers pay is extremely low, an average of £35 a week.

The UK Government’s Child Support Agency was unable to collect payment from many absent parents and was criticised for its poor record, so in 2015, they decided that this needed to change. The Child Support Service was to be phased out and the responsibility was to move to the new Child Maintenance Service between 2015 and 2018.

However, according to those using the service, the new CMS is no better than the old CSA. It appears that the CMS is telling people that they need to make their own family based arrangements. How is a mother who has escaped from an abusive relationship, possibly dragged by her ex-partner through family court to get contact with his children, who she is trying to protect from him, going to make any sort of arrangement with him for supporting the children?

If a family based arrangement won’t work, the CMS will charge the parent with care an application fee of £20. When a mother calls the CMS to start a claim she is asked for the £20 fee. What if she can’t afford it? Can it be deducted from the first maintenance payment? Why does the claimant have to pay, shouldn’t it be the parent who isn’t paying? Can the fee be paid by installments? No, it has to be paid up front, the only exception is provable domestic violence. No payment, no help from the CMS. Shouldn’t all fees be charged to the parent who isn’t paying? Shouldn’t this be on top of the maintenance rather than being taken from a mother struggling to support her children?

If they do manage to pay the fee, and the amount to be paid is worked out, based on a percentage of the paying parent’s income less various things, the CMS expects the paying parent to transfer the money to the parent with care by Direct Pay. It is the paying parent who decides whether to use Direct Pay. If Direct Pay isn’t used, or it doesn’t work, the CMS will use Collect and Pay where collection fees are charged – 20% from the paying parent and 4% from the receiving parent.

According to the government, there are a number of things that the CMS can do if the paying parent still won’t pay. Firstly they can get their employer to pay directly from their wages. They can also take money directly from the paying parent’s bank account, either a one off sum or regular payments. If these actions don’t work, they can go to court and send in the bailiffs, get a prison sentence for the paying parent, or force the sale of the paying parent’s property.

However, there are a number of ways that paying parents can avoid paying maintenance at all or getting the amount reduced whilst still earning a large amount of money. They can go “self-employed” and not declare all of their earnings to HMRC or become unemployed, possibly still working but being paid cash in hand.

They can also go to Family Court and get more contact with their children to cut the amount of maintenance or even get full custody so that they can receive maintenance off their children’s mother. The Family Courts need to be better educated on “High Conflict” cases where the mother brings up domestic abuse as a reason for the father not to have contact. These cases should be properly investigated, mothers not vilified but helped. Transfer of custody to the father needs to be very carefully considered to ensure that this is only done when absolutely essential, not merely as a way of the father getting out of paying maintenance.

If the mother points out to the CMS that the paying parent’s lifestyle is not consistent with the amount of money that they have declared such as having a big house or fancy holidays, the CMS will report them to the HMRC as tax cheats. But do HMRC have the time or inclination to follow up on these? The receiving parent has to be the one to point out to the CMS that paying parent is hiding income and has to prove this. Some parents have even had to hire private detectives to prove this. Isn’t this something the CMS should be doing, not leaving it to the receiving parent who often won’t have the money to do this?

Would it be better if there was a minimum payment that all paying parents should make towards their children’s upkeep? Could it not be worked out how much it costs to raise a child and a fair proportion of this be made a minimum? £40 a week? £50 a week? The paying parent should then have to prove why they can’t make this payment, long-term illness for example. This would mean that going “self-employed” or losing their jobs wouldn’t be an option as it would be assumed that they could pay this amount.

What about the arrears that built up under the old system? CMS doesn’t want anything to do with these; they try to get the receiving parent to give up any claim to this money. They don’t give the paying parent the chance to pay these, they don’t even ask, just put pressure on the receiving parent to write them off, a fresh start, concentrate on getting present and future maintenance. These arrears can run into thousands of pounds. The receiving parent needs to explicitly ask for the arrears to be collected or the CMS won’t do anything to collect them anyway.

When a case is transferred from the CSA to the CMS, the case history isn’t transferred. All that work, all that information about the paying parent is lost letting these irresponsible parents get away with continuing not to pay.

When a receiving parent makes a complaint to the CMS, they don’t call it a complaint, it is called an “inquiry.” The parent has to be really persistent if they are going to have their complaint investigated thoroughly. There are also complaints that the CMS does things in its own sweet time and parents have to fight hard and long to make sure that their complaints are dealt with at all, never mind in a timely manner.

Parents who don’t pay should be treated as criminals and receive criminal records. Why aren’t parents who don’t pay for their children be despised by the public the same why drunk drivers are now?

Shouldn’t Child Maintenance be a major priority? Isn’t the non-payment of maintenance a form of domestic abuse, of child abuse? Why are children suffering because one of their parents is too selfish to pay for their upkeep? A true Child Maintenance service would have proper powers to pursue and punish those parents who don’t take their responsibilities seriously. A service that will ensure that no child lives in poverty.

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About the Creator

Clare Scanlan

I am passionate about writing! Passionate about animals, especially horses, passionate about women's and children's rights!

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