Child Maintenance enforcement - what is realistic?

[innistree]

This is genuinely about a friend.

A friend has recently discovered that there is an open CMS claim against him and that arrears have built up for child maintenance relating to his biological child. For reasons I won't go into in detail, this was not something he was aware of previously, and there is no moral failing on his side. He spent much of the last decade outside the UK, and when he was here his address changed frequently, so correspondence did not reach him.

He is currently not in paid employment and has a number of physical and mental health conditions which make work difficult or unlikely. CMS appear to have applied the default rate of £38 per week during all previous years, without his knowledge, and ridiculous £££ arrears have accumulated as a result.

He has now received a letter threatening enforcement action, including possible driving licence disqualification and the use of bailiffs.

I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has experience of this from the receiving or paying side. I have a lot of sympathy for those affected by non-payment, and I'm absolutely not looking to argue the principle, but I'm trying to understand what enforcement action is realistically taken in practice and over what sort of timescale.

Don’t bother posting on here and expecting sane or reasoned advice, OP. My advice would be to post on UK Legal Advice on Reddit, you’ll get better answers.

Some of the replies on this post are insane. The child has two parents by the sounds of it. How is donating sperm with the best intentions a moral failing?

Would you consider a couple who adopted a child to not be the child’s ‘real’ parents?

Adopting an existing child is very different from creating one with the intention of not allowing a relationship with their biological parents.

Fortunately these days every effort is made to ensure adopted children know who their parents are.

I think you or rather your friends needs proper legal advice rather than advice on Mumsnet. There must be ways of people donating sperm and then not being liable for the kid, otherwise very few, if any one would want to be sperm donors. How you do it will surely be written in law, probably complex law.

If it was sperm donation how is it that they are going for child support? Surely they adopted the child legally? Why would he sign the birth certificate? They cant collect without proof of paternity?

Basically im skeptical you have been told the truth names arnt pulled out the hat for child support there has to be some kind of proof of paternity

The birth mum obviously doesn’t need to adopt the child, and paternity doesn’t need to be proven unless he contests it, which he won’t because he’s the dad.

There are ways, but as the OP said they did it u officially, so he is fully liable

He chose to father a child, so yes he is responsible for paying cms. If he didn’t want to be financially responsible he should have donated via a clinic. He will have been well aware of the legalities of both options.

No the other parent needs to adopt the child i was going to do it with my ex husband and my biological child but it requires her biological father to consent he refused (and also refused to pay or be in her life 🤷‍♀️) its fairly simple

Was he paid for it at the time?

They CAN adopt the child with concent, they do not HAVE to. And seen as they didn’t bother doing anything else legally to protect themselves or the child it’s not surprising if they didn’t adopt either.

Yes, it's clear now that asking here wasn't my brightest idea, even with the additional context provided in good faith. It seems the framing mattered more than the substance, and pretending I am asking from the receiving parent's side would probably have produced more helpful replies.

The POV that you posted from wouldn’t have made much difference, the legalities are the same and not many people will have experienced this fairly unusual situation. You didn’t need to post it on AIBU though, you could have posted in legal if you didn’t want as many honest replies. Nobody has been unfair here

Cms are very poor and move very slowly. Regarding arrears, the first serious move on their part is an application for a Liability order where he can attend court if he wishes. They are generally waved through by a judge because there is no defence to failing to support your child.

They do look at taking cars after this but only if the vehicle is of sufficient value. They can register a charge against a property. This was avoided by the father of my gs by transferring the house into his parents names. Who goes to these lengths fgs.

Our case reached the fraud team who were getting nowhere. Until the caseworker told him he was dissatisfied with his accounts and asked for several years payslips. I asked to settle with a lump sum of arrears and agreed to walk away. He paid up.

This was my experience a few years back. Much depends on the parties involved and quality of caseworker. I am the other side to your friend and believe me, its not easy. I focussed on my gs and did my best for him.

Surprisingly, the CSA will accept the mother's account at face value and require the alleged father to contest it, even if he is not named on the birth certificate. In most cases, that dispute leads to a DNA test, and refusing the test is generally treated as admitting paternity.
I believe there is actually a separate team dealing with sensitive cases, like when the named father is a public figure or celebrity. So you can ask the CSA to rely on your word naming your neighbour as a hit-and-run father, but not Keir Starmer.

I can't be certain, of course, but I genuinely cannot imagine that he was. Why is that relevant?

Thank you. I really do sympathise with those on the receiving, or rather non-receiving, side as well. It’s clear how much you care about your grandson's wellbeing, and he's lucky to have such committed grandparents.

From all the CMS threads I've read on here I have never ever heard of this level of action been taken. Seems very odd and not believable tbh!

Obviously not because adoption is a legal process. If it wasn’t legalised then they literally are not the child’s parents as parental responsibility would remain with the birth parents!

Here no legal undertakings were made and no formality to the agreement. So this man just fathered a child to this woman on the verbal understanding that she would raise the child with someone else. That is a irresponsible thing to do and unless and until parental responsibility is legally dissolved, he is the dad and he is the one who must take responsibility.

The child is now a young adult living some distance from all parties involved, so the issue is likely no longer relevant. The original agreement was for no contact and no involvement or decision-making power over the child's life.

It's very, very unusual for CMS to Chase historical debt.

It's more common for them to request that the RP agrees to writing it off (often implying they have no choice).

Your friend really needs to dig around in this as it's very unusual - it's never deemed in the taxpayers interest to chase a historic debt. When I worked there the only time historic debt was chased was from an estate because that's relatively easy to do, or in a high value case, which it doesn't sound like this is.

Is he sure it's genuine paperwork? Has he spoke to CMS (he shouldn't use the number on whatever letter he has received)

I believe there is actually a separate team dealing with sensitive cases, like when the named father is a public figure or celebrity. So you can ask the CSA to rely on your word naming your neighbour as a hit-and-run father, but not Keir Starmer.

That team actually work in the same way in terms of assumption of paternity until disputed.

Generally though cases with public figures or celebs aren't dealt with by CMS because there's an income ceiling of 156k a year they can deal with so anyone dealing with someone earning more than that would be advised to go through the courts instead.

The sensitive case team more often deal with cases where there are safety concerns, such as DV, or the likes.

Who’s threatening to take away his driving license? That doesn’t happen in the UK for unpaid child maintenance.

In my experience, as a (non) receiving parent the CMS will do the sum total of fuck all. They wrote off my exes debt and made a 'nil' assessment for the remaining years because he apparently earned less than £7 per week. His lifestyle (and FB business page) proved otherwise but they didn't care.

Based on that, and the experience of many of my friends, your friend would be spectacularly unlucky if the CMS actually did anything.

The CMS do have the power to do this. I've never heard of it happening though.