Men who quit their jobs to avoid CM payments...

Like others exes new woman paid her tax man to set him up SE, he declared he earned minimum wage (while living in Richmond, flying all over the world and having articles posted about him being a specialist) and CMS did nothing. I tried with their system to show (he was posting about gifts on fb that would have been at least £2k) gathered all the evidence and nothing happened. It was far more stressful for me than him and I literally can't see the point in CMS. He just ignored their calls. Then I got a letter saying if I wanted my measly monthly amount they had decided I need to have mediation with him...in London! Yeah OK, I'll pay for childcare as a single parent to meet up with an absolutely nasty arse once a week to discuss why he should be paying more than the bare minimum shall I? I dropped asking for payments as the whole thing was causing more stress. I was getting more from CB than him anyway.

It is a complete joke and one of the reasons so few people decide to have kids IME.

My ex does the same thing with his latest girlfriend

She does it as she has such low self esteem and has swallowed the whole 'she'd only spend it in herself anyway'

The csa once rang him to say he owed something daft like £10 a week (for 2 kids) and he told them he couldn't afford to pay that

While sat sunning himself on a 5* holiday and his brand new sports car was sat on the drive,waiting for him to come home

They seemed to accept this and stopped bothering him

I got a letter saying that his debt had been wiped-its not their debt to write off-its my dc's but they just shrugged and said there is nothing they could do

Getting caught doesn’t happen to then often though . Sadly

He won’t pay anything towards school uniform or clothes or extra curriculars or ANYTHING. Thing is the kids are now mid teens and beginning to realise all this. Their mum has never bad mouthed him or discussed any of this. but they’re working out for themselves what kind of man he really is.

Friends EXH did this.
Another friends ex stayed in the same job role but changed to self employed.
Weasels like this will always find a way to wriggle out if responsibility.

The more money he pays out, the less there is for their household.

Lots of people can get past that, fairly easily.

Friends ex declared one business bankrupt and put the other in his mum’s name… his ‘declared’ income is so low he’s liable to pay £100 a month which he has never paid.
He works for his ‘mum’s business’ now and has various machinations in place to make it all work.
Must be exhausting for him. Particularly as my friend has a good income so actually, he wouldn’t have had to pay much toward his child and they had 2 flats between the. To live in.

That's really interesting, can you give some examples please? Or point me towards some information sources?

Absolutely this! I work with a woman who’s husband has children with his ex, he pays £86 a month for those 2 children, every single year at Christmas, birthdays, school uniform time etc his wife who I work with comes in slating his ex to the high heavens for asking him for more money to put towards these things “because we already pay child maintenance, that’s all she’s getting she can take it out of that”🥲 because of course children only cost £43 a month each to feed, clothe, house, heat, breakfast & after school clubs and so she should have plenty left over from that amount to also then buy uniform, presents etc. It’s baffling but I have heard it a lot from women at work who’s partners have children with an ex, dad never see’s the kids and pays the bare minimum yet it’s the ex in the wrong!

My daughter's father is self-employed in a trade. He has his payments made into his wife's account, so the CMS can't track his payments.

It is a woman who is enabling his audacious behaviour.

This is what my ex did. Went on to have 3 dc and never had my dc or payed for them.
Csa (or what ever it was before) shut the case because 'he claimed no benefits'. When dc was about 15 I came across him working as a cleaner I didn't bother claiming at this point as I didn't want him back in dc life as he obviously wasn't going to be a good role model. I don't know for how long he'd been working at this point.

I also agree that if they can't afford it now, the liability doesn't go away but continues to accrue. There should also be custodial sentences for avoiding payment- it should be like tax avoidance. And in prison they have to work and earn money for their kids so they don't avoid it that way either.

You only have to spend half an hour on mumsnet to get a glimpse of the amount of women out there willing to put up with twats. Let’s assume the real number is X 1000.
It’s bloody depressing. My heart sings every time a woman posts that she genuinely isn’t putting up with a crap arsehole of a man anymore (I wonder how many of them are genuine though rather than too embarrassed to admit they never LTB).

I know many of these men think they're spiting the mothers of their children, but the children suffer more from not only the lack of financial contribution, but the likely lack of a relationship with that parent.

They know this but they don't care. If they really, truly felt that the mother would only refuse the kids the benefit of the money by spending it all
on manicures and facials while the kids go without, they could fiddle the CMS but still get the benefits to their kids by buying them clothes etc directly and making sure they get time with them. They don't, because they don't care. This kind of man sees his family as possessions and auxiliaries to his own life.

Mine works cash in hand, is self employed & has a girlfriend who tells him how to dodge CMS while making both her children’s fathers pay.
Ive told him if he doesn’t start paying he can tell the kids why they can’t do swimming, gymnastics, any of the clubs as I cannot afford that & to feed them.

I get all the excuses under the book but it’s excuses I myself have, like running a car & a house.
Its called being a parent.

It's ridiculous as not only is it bad for their families but these deadbeat dads cost the taxpayer money as the mum ends up having to claim Universal Credit/a lot more UC than she would if the men just paid up.

Governments always want to go after single mothers and carers working and earning 50p more than they are allowed to while claiming benefits but never pursue these men.

The answer to that of course is if he doesn’t want to give her money is that she gives him the kids and I think that will happen more and more.

The only part about the Australian system that I don’t like is that it calculate both parents income.
So if Mum was earning $200,000 and Dad was earning $100,000, the child-support would be based on her not needing as much money because she’s earning more.
Which then traps Mum in the position that she’s no better off earning 200,000 than she is earning 100,000 but of course there’s lots of other progression that comes with the 200,000.

I also really like the fact that once you’ve been living together for six months in Australia, you are de facto and therefore there’s none of this we weren’t married. We’re not splitting the assets nonsense.

It is awful though, I think a lot of the time dad’s take the “I’m not giving HER my money” and fail to realise that actually it’s their children they are hurting. I always find it absolute madness to see so many dad’s slagging off the mother of their children, while not paying CMS, when it is only because of the mother that those kids are fed, clothed, warm, have a roof over their head. They always have something to say and never want to contribute or do anything to help, vile.

I think most of the time they quit their actual job and then start up cash in hand/self employed/off the books so they are never actually without money, it just doesn’t go through HMRC so as far as CMS are concerned they owe £0.

I have a friend who is in this situation with her child’s dad, owes £0 in child maintenance because he’s “unemployed” yet is driving around in an expensive car, multiple holidays/weekends away etc every year.