Fucking fuming - child maintenance review

[aremenreallysuchcunts]

Got child maintenance review today. DC dad declared he earned £13,248 last financial year. He claims he works 6 days a week and is always late picking dc up due to work and works every weekend even the Saturdays he has dc. He owes £1254 in arrears via the cms and £2500 from before I applied to the cms (obviously I have written that off) so now I get the princely sum of £29.30 a week but not before cms have taken their 4%.
is this a joke? How do men like this have no shame? I know there is nothing to be done I am just venting. I have never included his money in my budget thank god but that doesn’t mean I don’t need it! I work full time and I work hard but why do men think this is ok? Why do the girlfriends think this is ok? Why do the father’s parents think this is ok? I have 3 boys and no way would I be congratulating them on avoiding maintenance.
Oh, and he’s a plasterer 🤣
Fucking patriarchy.

Or just quit.

if they have a new partner they can just quit and become a sahp or a housewife/husband.

Without going into detail, I haven’t had to, which is sad in itself. Son very much loves his dad, but lives 99% with me and siblings out of choice.
ETA: I would never and have never bad mouthed his dad. I think he’d get very upset if I did, and I don’t think it’d achieve anything.

Good bloody Lord, it just gets worse.

Obviously every situation is different, but sometimes men say they really want children but then are a let-down as a father once it happens. Sometimes abuse only starts when the woman is pregnant - that's a known point at which it can start. Sometimes people change. I have seen a few men who were great partners when younger have a massive mid-life crisis and undergo huge changes, not for the better, leaving their wife and children in the dirt. Sure, some women have children with men who are wrong' uns, but often they didn't plan it that way.

Report him for suspected income tax fraud!

They work it out themselves. My son is 33 and he'd worked his Dad out by the time he was 19. If a child asks, you should always tell the truth. Everyone deserves to know what their Dad is.

As someone else said, I'd have had no problem evidencing what it would have been spent on - in theory.

But working ft and parenting a child 24/7 this would have laid more on to me, having to keep receipts, work out what I'd spent where, what proportion of that came from the CM and if I'd spent the CMS on the right stuff or if I'd say paid for the nursery with my wage when it came in, but then used the CMS to pay the rent, because the timings coincided, only a proportion of which should be paid by CM, or the freezer breaks and so I use the CM to buy a new one but support the child myself for the rest of that month etc?
And if I put in a receipt for 'clothes' or 'haircut' how do they know that it's for me or the child?
What happens if it's deemed I've spent money on something I shouldn't have?
Tbh I wouldn't bother chasing it if that was a thing, he only had to pay a few quid a week and we never got that because they 'couldn't find him' so to go to those lengths to be a few quid up, although it would have made a difference, just wouldn't have been worth it.

And I really do think that it would give these feckless absent parents a weapon, they'd be constantly 'reporting', every time the RP went out without the child, every time they got a hair cut or had a new pair of shoes, it'd tie everything in knots.

And you'd then have people demanding it's done for child benefit, then benefits like UC and disability benefits and then pensions.

If a man demanded that his partner accounted for every penny of his money in this way while they were together, people would probably think it was financial abuse.

ETA - the only way to change this and apply pressure to the right places is social change, until it's socially unacceptable there's no impetus to change the way it works.
Look at smoking, was everywhere 50 years ago, popular, cool even. Advertising everywhere, there was barely anywhere you couldn't smoke.
Now it's the complete opposite, it's socially unacceptable, and bans were brought in in response to that, advertising bans, packets behind screens and not deemed attractive, no smoking in public areas and a real recognition of the harm that was being done, and people vocal about it and criticism openly of smokers. But people's attitudes had to change first, then pressure was applied, then the shift happened.

Again, it wouldn't be the NRP with access to the records, but a mediating agency. And it's the overall amount over a year say, not each individual month. A new fridge would be obviously to the benefit of the child's household and basic well being. I'm not saying it wouldn't be complex and fraught but it might be an example of the kind of compromise that would enable more MPs to vote for a more stringent system.

Some MP's would absolutely jump at it because very quickly they'd be able to say "as we check that the money hard-working fathers pay is used properly we're morally obliged to do the same for hard-workibg taxpayers" and NRP's receiving any benefits would have to account for all of their income.

Then it would be "well if some on UC/ESA/etc have to account for their spending then it's only fair that everyone on benefits does"

MPs didn't even get interested in this when the money non-payers were dodging was owed to the government...

Only societal change and expecting higher standards of men (and it is mostly men) will change it.

I do see what you're saying, but the meditating agency would be inundated with demands for checks on the RP, because the NRP saw them in the hairdressers, or in a pub, or just because they feel like it, not because they saw the financial side of it and then complained.

And again even yearly, how would you prove that what you spent was actually going on the child -wouldn't you have to keep receipts of everything you spent on the child, and then proportions of household stuff like utilities and food. So if the NRP paid £6k in a year, you'd have to prove what you spent that £6k on and that would fall to me to keep records & receipts for everything I pay or buy in order to do that. And what if I spend that £6k and buy them, I don't know, a pony? No use to me, definitely for the child, but is it actually what that money is for? And who defines that?

I just don't think it would be feasible to administer and places more of a load on the RP and an expectation to prove they aren't taking the piss, and have their finances scrutinised because their relationship broke down.

The whole "I'm not paying for your lifestyle" imo is a red herring anyway, it's a poor attempt at justification of not paying. Most people know that living with a child is more expensive than living alone. So they know that if they're not paying at least some of that extra, someone else (the RP or the welfare state) is. I don't think in all honesty it's a serious thought, that they genuinely think they're paying to support a fantastic lifestyle for the RP, it's bitterness at the ex and again, an attempt to justify that.

I don’t disagree, but he’s never asked….because he doesn’t need to. He’s said things to me that we acknowledge but he doesn’t want more. Always here if he wants more, but I’ll never offer it:

Yes to be fair I was thinking more of my generation - my dd20 is in no rush to ‘settle down’ nor does she see the goal in life is to get married and have dc. My oldest dc is the same.

No, our circumstances were the same. We have the same parents - you are possibly getting confused with our older sibling (my fault for not explaining properly)
But I fully agree with your point - my dc have had a different mum to each other (still me!) depending on me being a married sahm and a single whom mum and the different challenges I have faced

Sorry but I am never going to agree to listing what maintenance is spent on. Actually I will, once ex lists everything he spends his wages on first. Though I think it is a slippery slope and does not solve the issue at heart, which as pp have said so much better than me, is about societal view on men paying for their dc.

I am taking my dc on holiday on Monday for a week (that I have scrimped and saved for) but will keep checking in on this thread so please don’t think this stops here.
I have emailed my MP
I have emailed Gingerbread
I had an emotional vomit to my boss 🙈 and she was amazing and said she will support, try to think what else we can do
No response from MNHQ 🙁
Will call the CMS on Monday to get some clarification on some things
Any other suggestions?

Thank you all so much for this thread - even the differing opinions. It all helps, at the end of the day I think we all want the same thing and I really appreciate everyone sharing their stories - even though they enraged me. We have to try. We have to try and make things better.

Get that letter to HMRC Compliance done. He's perfect for an investigation and it would be a doddle to "break" him IME.

Go for it.

Thanks for that. I am trying to write down everything everyone has suggested (got myself a pretty folder and everything 🤣) but dont want to miss anything.

My exh got away with paying nothing at all.

This was some years ago now, but he was claiming unemployment benefits (whilst working cash in hand but no one was interested in that), and his actual calculation came to 0.

I remember suggesting to him that he should at least pay a fiver occasionally, but he told me that was so little that it wouldn't possibly help me. I remember thinking if it was so little, why was he so bothered about paying it. It would at least have bought some breakfast cereal or some bread etc and would actually have been a huge help to me.

Literally the day after he would no longer be expected to pay anything, my exh 'suddenly' found a proper legit job...

It disgusts me that they can get away with not paying their fair share for their kids. I had hoped things had improved now for those going through it, but it appears not.

I have just submitted my report to HMRC 😱 The options they give you aren’t great and I can see why people don’t bother. All I can do is try 🤷🏽‍♀️

Outrageous - a fiver can buy a couple of meals! If it’s nothing to him why doesn’t he want his own flesh and blood to have it 🤦🏽‍♀️

To be clear, I don't agree that RP should have to account for the money at all, I simply suggested it as a possible bone to throw to make the tightening of systems less unpalatable to the payers. It's a possible strategy to achieve the bigger goal.

I do get what you were saying and I see where you were coming from.
To me it is just really simple - men, pay for your children! I honestly can’t believe how easily they get away with it - the stories on this thread have upset me so much. I just can’t believe in 2025 we are still in this situation.

Can we do the maths?
ex declared £13248 annual earnings.
he pays £200 a month to cms (up until the review. I get £140 of that)
Genuinely how does he survive if his income correct?

Does he rent or own property?

He'd have £800ish a month so if he pays a mortgage or rent that's a substantial amount of that then that'll be HMRC's first question to him.

When I worked for CMS I had one guy adamant that he earned £1100 a month, paid £250 for his kids, £600 for his rent and the remaining £250 was "absolutely fine" for the rest of his bills, there was no undeclared income at all...😂

He lives with his girlfriend and her dc in a HA property - I think he has done it legitimately but not 100%.

DC is starting secondary school in September and when I was filling in all the details of parents for the school I asked him for his address (I didn’t know it) and he said it’s easier to give his parents home address 🤷🏽‍♀️