To let you all know that the Child Maintenance Service..

[Rippeditoff]

have used their full powers (passport removal, driving licence suspension): 10 times since 2019

3 immediate passport confiscations
7 immediate driving disqualifications in Great Britain (July 2019 – March 2025) / CMS published data

And that the total unpaid debt is 756.6 million pounds as of 2025

Would I also be unreasonable to say this is a national disgrace to single parents and their children which we should all be raising with our MPs?

Where is that statistic from?

I never got a penny. His debt was written off. Manages to have a decent life, buy property abroad etc. only saving grace is our kids, who are now grown up, see through him. They avoid him as much as they feel they can get away with.

YANBU. ExH owes me thousands in unpaid child maintenance. They have his address, NI number, job details. How can it be so hard to make him pay it?!

Spot on

We need to be clear that child maintenance is not just a single mother issue. Lots of people in new relationships and marriages still are owed maintenance and many struggle without it.

This always shocks and amazes me - what on earth do these fathers think their children are living on . The amounts when they are paid are ridiculously low and not always consistent. Society as a whole needs to voice their feelings about this more forcefully.

I didn't even know they had those kinds of powers. That's outrageous!!

I have emailed my MP, GMB News, BBC breakfast news and Piers Morgan 🙈 basically saying what you have said OP and I think others should do the same. Who else can we contact?

My ex never paid a single penny. My youngest is 33. I still get a yearly statement from CMS notifying me that his contribution will be nil. Gives me the rage, every time

Why can't we adopt the US model of cancelling driving licences of non payers or aggressively chasing them for payment? This country's legal system really, really sucks when it comes to deadbeat fathers who provide no financial support

Indeed, it only took 3 posts before we were met with dipshit classism.

I just told my husband about this and he said that maybe bollock removal would be more effective - 1 testicle per month in arrears. It would certainly reduce the risk of creating further unsupported children.

He's a paying parent, FWIW.

My experience with the CMS. Have 2 DC with ex.

He used to pay, not always on time and not a lot. But he did. Then he met his now wife.

I received a letter from CMS stating that as he now had responsibility for 2 more DC (not his) my maintenance was reduced.

Then they (ex and wife) decided that I didn't need actual money one month. A bag of her sons cast offs were a suitable replacement. Strangely my DC can't eat clothes, and his old stretched out of shape/faded summer clothes weren't much help in November.

Then he accidentally sent me a message meant for her saying how much he hated living in his flat and not with her. I assume this was so she could still claim as a single parent. So I forwarded this info to CMS. After all, the reduction for her dc is no longer applicable if he's moved out. They said there was no evidence that I hadn't faked the message and I needed to prove he lived elsewhere. His phone number (which they had on record) was shown in the screenshots.

He then quit his job as apparently she couldn't cope with 2 DC on her own, they had 3 more and CMS decided he couldn't afford to pay anything but would persue him for the debts.

They told me over the years that they can't take his driving license away as he needs it to get a job. I don't have one, but UC have never accepted that as a reason I can't work. Seeing as there's a thing called public transport!

Last I heard they'd decided to wipe the debts as he can't pay them and DC are adults now. Which is so kind of them as I'm being threatened by bailiffs for debts I've accrued over the years of not having enough money. Maybe if they actually did their job I could sort that out. Wonder if the bailiffs will wipe my debt on the basis that I can't afford it

CMS are a fucking disgrace.

The Swedish system is much better. If the parent who is supposed to pay fails to do so then the state pays the money to the parent raising the child so that they don't suffer, while at the same time chasing the non paying parent for the debt. They have all kinds of powers to take money off people who try to weasel out of paying their taxes and fines, and the children and the parent doing the work of raising them do not suffer.

I've been through all this shite with my ex

First they 'lost' our details-clamed i didnt have any dc with him and hadn't received any claims for money

Then it was 'hes on the dole so cant pay'

Then it was 'we cant find him' (he was working cash in hand and living with his mother,which i told them but they 'cant take your word for it')

Then it was 'we cant take anything from his salary'

He went to prison at this point and they couldn't take any money from him as 'its against the law'

They did try to contact him at one point and he told them he wasn't going to pay and they couldn't make him-they seemed to back off and take him at his word

Then they lost his details again and then wrote it all off so they won't see a penny

This is a prince among men that cheerfully watched me struggle while going on 5*star Holidays ate out every night buys endless coffees and drove a posh new van (laughing at me as he drove past me a few times)

It's a joke-i wasn't asking for anything my dc where not entitled to

That’s incredible. Proper, grown up system! Ours is bloody awful - decisions being made at high levels probably by men who aren’t paying for their own children. 😡

A relevant example relating to this is the recent thread that was on here about people's willingness to pay cash for services.

A staggering number of people posting didn't give a shit that paying tradesmen in cash enabled them to dodge paying child maintenance for their kids.

It was eye opening. People don't give a shit unless it affects them.

I for one won't pay a penny of cash to a tradesperson, bank transfer only, and clearly marked that I'm paying for a service not 'paying a friend' or similar.

The government need to sort it out, and pathetic men need to sort themselves out who produce children and bugger off without helping to feed/clothe/house them.

bas exactly. UC forces single parents to give them four months bank statements and will grill them about it. If I could give your comment multiple hearts I would.

It's the same when single parents want to double barrel a surname. The system won't let them officially add it.

My sons father is a civil servant FFS and CMS can't impose a detachment of earnings order. Apparently his department - The Home Office - have not/will not complete the form. So if once government department cannot get money from an employee in another government department, what hope does anyone else have!

If CMS write to you and the letter reads as if they are telling you they are wiping the debt please be aware that it's actually up to you if it's wiped.

If you write back - please do so recorded delivery - stating that you want the debt to remain on file they have to do this.

It is not their debt - it's debt owed to you.

The letters are something I've complained about numerous times as people do not realise that they have a choice.

One of the most satisfying cases I ever worked on was a man who dodged his debts for years. Then very deliberately wrote a will leaving money to his siblings actually stating that it was to be spent on his children but not by "her" (his ex wife). He would have been outraged at the fact on his death his £63000ish debt was claimed from his estate and paid to his ex wife (who was actually the carer of their three children one of whom was severely disabled).

That is shocking @YourWildAmberSloth. It will be because the Home Office has SSCL as their really crap payroll. I’d suggest writing to their Perm Sec Antonia Romero - completely unacceptable that a civil servant can dodge their responsibilities.

Does not surprise me in the slightest. My ex forged a letter from his mum claiming she was financially responsible for him, at the big age of 30, she worked part time at KFC but managed to fund his monthly trips to Amsterdam, 3x per week nights out as well as running her home. Once he got a job that wasn’t cash in hand he paid 2p per month, instead of the whopping £32 he was meant to pay, they said they couldn’t do anything because he was making a payment. This was after trying to deny that our son is his, something that was never mentioned until CMS got involved.

Wow!

I agree my ex is paid in cash by wealthy various " upstanding members of the community" who don't seem to care that they aren't just defrauding HMRC they are defrauding his children

We live in a small place as well, I am very tempted to name and shame them all

I always insist on paying everyone by bank transfer now for this reason

I really don’t know why we as a country don’t sort this out. Never mind the 2 child benefit cap - we could lift so many kids out of poverty and probably without much actual cash investment if we actually enforced CMS. It’s one of the things the Americans do well - no stone left unturned if you owe any debts!

And although it costs a fortune to send people to prison and there are a shortage of spaces, you’d only need a few ‘normal’ blokes to go to prison for the majority to suddenly find they can contribute after all.

A quick google shows that the £756 million number is the total uncollected since 2012, and it equates to 7% of maintenance due not being collected over that period.

However I suspect the biggest issue is not the maintenance due but not collected figure of 7%, but the maintenance that is never calculated as due because the incomes of those who should pay it are legally or illegally reduced through hiding or mis declaring income.

How does removing the ability to get a job (ID, driving licence), travel to a job or do the job (driving licence) help to get money from a now unemployed parent?