Anyone think the UK is a joke when it comes to not paying child maintenance?

[SleepDreamThinkHuge]

You hear a lot of stories especially in the UK where courts are not that strict on individuals who are no longer together to pay maintenance for their child. Unlike the UK, USA is much more stricter and it is much harder to avoid paying child maintenance.

Anyone think the rules need to be a lot stricter in the UK? How can it be better enforced in the UK and what is the minimum amount a month you think someone should pay for maintenance assuming someone is on around £1.5k-£2k after tax a month.

I don't know what the actual stats are in the US versus the UK but I do know when I go to the RMV to renew my driving license there are big signs saying "you cannot renew your license if you owe child support".

I haven’t had any maintenance in five years, my ex “doesn’t work or claim benefits” nothing can be done cms won’t do anything.

The issue that you can earn very well but still be assessed as "owing" official child support at an almost-nil rate.

YANBU

I think the UK laws around child maintenance are piss poor. Women shouldn't have to push to get monies taken from salaries, it should be the default for working fathers, so there is no fucking around or sending payment late.

Parents who hide wealth should be dealt with like the criminals they are.

I agree. Mom was a single mother 40 odd years ago and nothing has changed .

Friends kids are on free school meals and their father travels the world with his new family (he’s a millionaire)

Another family, on the breadline - father disappeared so mum can’t work as there’s 6 kids. Trapped in poverty.

The government doesn’t care - they slap in a payment order and what do you know? They move jobs.

I would also suggest the 50/50 only works if there’s a set saving plan for shoes uniforms trips ext that must be court ordered and receipts filed for the child

There are many many threads about this but the basic answer as far as I can see is:

1. that it should be a branch of HMRC so its much more difficult for self employed NRPs to misrepresent their earnings


2. There should be a basic minimum, (that's not a joke like the £7.50 pw that is currently payable for NRPs on benefits) that all NRPs should contribute (barring disability / long term illness) that if they fail to meet, is paid by the state and racked up as a debt that cannot be written off like the current CMS do.


3. The agency should be much more specific about what it covers - properly funded, caseworkers assigned so that each case can be properly assessed and childcare costs should be factored in as a specific cost, not just lumped in with the vague "contribution to essentials".

I agree OP
U.K. law law is shockingly weak on this
I prefer the US system where they remove someone's driving licence as an early stage if they default on CM ! Wouldn't that be wonderful!

I have lots of American friends who don't get child support. There's no set rate it seems, often it's just a lump sum on divorce. My friend had resorted to the food bank prior to the divorce hearing and even now gets just a few hundred a month when her ex is on half a million dollars a year.

This is what completely mind boggling to me. The state sees very well that a person buys property, goes on overseas holidays, buys expensive cars. It all is very visible in the land registry, dvla, border control.

But for the purposes of child maintenance - nah, he has no money.

They told me they won’t investigate it because he “could” be living off a partner, I know he isn’t but they don’t care. How can someone live on nothing for 5 years, you would think they would be suspicious.

Maybe they should lose their passport as well? No child support no holiday.

Also dislike the UK term single mothers, as opposed to American ‘dead beat dads’

They told me they won’t investigate it because he “could” be living off a partner, I know he isn’t but they don’t care.
Yeah, or family as in my case. Can't make an enquiry into another person's finances, so that's the end of it.

Agree! And another law to punish mothers that withhold contact to increase child maintenance payments. They should be jailed.

Well to say that 21% of UK male suicide driven by child maintenance service directly, Id say they need to sort out their shit before piling on more restrictions.

There is always two sides to every story, awaits the usual MN crowd pile on.

Financial difficulties are always a big driver in suicides, I don't think it's as easy to pin this on child maintenance.

Have had some experience of this in Germany.
2 people went self-employed so as to minimise CM payments, in those days, €600 per month (1 child each time). No spousal maintenance was payable as the spouse was in full-time work. The second of these had seen what had happened to the money, as his (then) wife took it as her own, so it wasn't ring-fenced for her child from her first husband.
Second person had a high-earning second wife, who ensured the child was looked after (clothes, haircuts etc.) when they were with their father.
Third example, which I actually find outrageous, was someone who cheated on her husband at least twice, 1 child, they owned their own house and he ended up having to pay 5/8ths of his net monthly pay to her - not sure if this also included the mortgage or if she ever went back to work. Worse still, she was living with one of the people she cheated with.

www.upfederation.org/blog/our-blog-1/parental-deaths-the-child-maintenance-service-are-parents-in-financial-despair-being-driven-to-premature-death-1

Feel free to have a read how they came to their conclusion. As some one who had dealt with the shocking behavior of the CM from the other side, they can be very callous, manipulative and often very very wrong in their assessments and do not rectify their mistakes. There are usually big looser`s on both sides.

Definitely agree. Dc is over 18 now and I received no cm for his whole childhood, neither did he have contact.
First off was moving jobs each time the cm got near and then was not working or claiming benefits for the last 16 years. Not sure how you can live with no money the cms should be able to investigate these cases because chances are these fathers are dodging tax as well.
In the end I gave up because it was making me ill. The cms rely on mothers giving up. They also state its down to the mother to find out if /where they live and work (how do you do that when there is no contact /previous dv etc).
We need a total overhaul of the system (not like last time where any owed money got wiped clean).

We have a much better benefits system than the US though. I agree that much much more should be done to ensure that both parents pay for the children they have chosen to have, but where a RP is relying heavily on benefits, I would have the NRPs CMS payments go back to the taxpayer. That way, we could ensure that all children are provided with what they need either by their parents or the state, and the government would have much more incentive to enforce payment of CM.

@ClocksGoingBackwards the link between maintenance and benefits was broken long ago because RPs had their benefits reduced due the maintenance that was supposedly being paid but often wasn't. The system is simply not quick or reactive enough to be able to cope if a formerly paying NRP stops. RPs who are largely reliant on benefits are usually so because of the prohibitive cost of childcare, even after the UC contributions to it or the difficulty of suitable wrap around care etc. It may result in a few cases well a child is well provided for with maintenaance AND the RP receives UC but those cases are vastly outnumbered by those who would absolutely fucked if the link was restored and by that I mean the children.

My DH side of story. CSA and the CMS tried to tell him he owed £7000 no less than 3 TIMES. This was from when he was laying exW direct. He paid every month on time. We had to get all bank statements from the alleged period to prove it had been paid....twice. The 3rd time he lost his shit!

He also had experiences of the phone operators shouting at him when he was trying to sort it out that he should just pay it and stop trying to get out of it.

So yeah shit show all round!

Note that it was he who contacted them each time, but he was still treated like he was trying to get out of paying.

It’s terrible. My exH is self employed. Splashes the cash no problem but has said he claims benefits so only has to pay £7.50 a month per child. Doesn’t stop him trying to declare father of the year though!

Yes.

I think the system was set up to avoid the kind hell my mother and us kids went through in the 80s. On paper she was married to a very well paid professional, officially there were savings (but frozen, long story) and .. we were entitled to nothing. And nothing we got. Thank god for grandparents.

As I understand it that wouldn’t happen now because the system was designed to be a safety net for the kids in this kind of situation. Also CM isn’t deducted from the safety net economic support to avoid the payee using withholding as a cosh on the recipient parent .

So far, so good. Much ,much better than it was.

However some see this as a way to shift their financial obligations as a parent onto the state.

In my own personal version of the universe the state support is a load, owed by the parent who withdrew their financial, physical & emotional support from their children. This load cannot be written off, extinguished in any fashion. Win the lottery, inherit, get a job not under the table once they turn 18, come back from abroad. You still owe it. If it has to come off your pension or any property you own, even in part, so be it.

Self employed ? Suddenly under employed ? Income drop ? Supported by parents/somebody else ? 3 monthly interview for you, to explain why you have still not returned to your former earning power. Uncomfortable level of scrutiny for those who give you work as self employed, employ you, share a company with you, are officially taking care of you. Extra special unannounced audits to check there’s no funny business going on.

Some people will never pay. Some can’t, some won’t and will go to all kind of lengths and putting themselves in a precarious position with regards who they trust to be “the legal owner” of their assets or account. The cost of running such a system would probably cost as much as it saves. But a large chunk of parents currently playing the “magic eraser my children away” game would see more net than hole, and we wouldn’t be relying on so many to successfully (or not so much) resist the temptation. Which is better for children. When the system doesn’t accidentally throw up the temptation to wash hands and walk away, fewer will do it, fewer children will grow up feeling they were disposable. (IMO, which is based on 35 years of being in it, watching other kids get pulled into it, mulling it all over from many angles in many contexts)

They won't take "has said" he claims benefits as proof, they will have checked that.. so he's presumably claiming benefits and not merely pretending to.

I agree though, they're shit. Our household has both paid and received maintenance and they've been shit all round. What I will say though, is they're much much friendlier to women. Its a totally different story when I ring up to when dp does. Strange.

loan, not load. Screw you Covid, my spelling is bad enough without extra help.