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?

So back in 2006, my DD's dad walked out on us. I had to claim Income Support (as it was then), and in those days you only got to keep £20 of any maintenance paid, the rest was deducted from your benefits.

ExP didn't want to pay maintenance, so he didn't have to. It was that simple.

For the next 5 years that I was claiming, the CSA (as it was then) rang me twice a year at 10am on a Sunday. Bang on every six months. Wanting to know where ExP lived and where he worked etc. I told them every time. Gave them the address of his mum's where he was living. Told them where he was working. Thank you, they said, that's very helpful.

They sent him a letter to his mum's address twice a year which he ignored. After 5 years they closed the case and wrote off his debt (which totalled several thousands at that point), but didn't tell me until some months later. I complained and got £150 in compensation. They then reopened the case but never "found" (or apparently even looked for) ExP.

DD is now 23 and it looks like fuck all has changed!

Oh yes my ex had 100k in the bank at one point from the divorce settlement (he’s probably since spent it on women) but that is irrelevant to CMS who only look at income, not capital.

It’s an absolute SCANDAL. I honestly believe in years to come people will look back and be horrified.

I’ll only believe a government really cares about women and equality when they overhaul the CMS. It’s really quite unbelievable how it perpetuates inequality for women in 2025 as if we are living in the Victorian era.

This x1000000000.
I think there possibly would be a way for argue discrimination if the UK was still part of Europe. Of course it’s discriminatory. The CMS has to be the shittest organisation of the British state. It all amounts to another win for the patriarchy at women’s’ expense.

You are correct that the majority of paying parents are fathers - 93% according to this (point 7)

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-statistics-data-to-june-2025/child-maintenance-service-statistics-data-to-june-2025

And what you do get via CMS isn’t index linked. Mine has stayed at the same rate for the last 7 years despite high inflation - so a decrease in real terms.

Pittance?! I was on both sides so have sympathy for all.

how many times do you work out your weekly/monthly budget on your gross pay?? Guess the answer is 0. The absent parent is being calculated on money they do not bring home.

Surely it’s about the cms not being fit for purpose all round.
if the system was done correctly then all parties would be treated equally and more absent parents would support their child

My ex has been found to have been declaring the wrong income. He has been declaring £28k a year which was his income from 2020 (self employed)

He now owes me and my children roughly £30k, and they’re doing nothing about it. They already wrote off £7k from 2019. He has offered £1k to write it all off 🙄

Now he had been found out he is saying he now only works 2 days a week, which I know is untrue. We should be like America where they’re penalised for dropping hours and lowering salaries.

We were together for 20 years until I ended the relationship, and now he’s being allowed to financially abuse us.

Because ALL children should be equal. No child asked for parents to split up or get a new partner.

my money was reduced as my ex moved in with a woman who had 4 kids then they went on to have 4 more. It wasn’t the children’s fault they still deserved food on the table and shoes on their feet.

my partners payment went down £10 a month when we had our child.

CMS is worked out to be the absolute legal minimum you need to pay towards your child.

Some dad's being told they have to pay more than the legal minimum is hardly comparable to the thousands and thousands of women getting absolutely nothing, and isn't an urgent problem that needs fixing.

When they sort out the shambles that's resulting in Mums having to use food banks and clothing banks just to get by because these men are avoiding paying for their own kids the powers at be can look at the men being forced to pay more than the minimum for their kids.

The system isn't fit for purpose, but it overwhelmingly effects women.

The problem with bringing up the fact some men feel screwed over every time this issue is discussed is that we all know what would get fixed first if a CMS overhaul were to happen, and it wouldn't be them suddenly deciding women have the raw end of the deal.

Because parents are the ones who get themselves in the messes they create in the first place and as usual expect everyone else to fix the problems they created

And if parenrd focus on the children they have and not blending and breeding more them maybe there would less pressure of the organisation in the first place?

Let us now compare this with what happens if you are a 93 year old woman who stops paying her council tax.

Within 3 months you get taken to court. At which point a CCJ is put on in your absence.

They then quickly contact bailiffs. Who started sending pretty awful letters.

What they don’t do is think “hmmm - 93 - I wonder if there is a reason she suddenly stopped paying her council tax - perhaps I should contact social services to do a check on this.” Nope they go straight to court then bailiffs.

This was my gran. She was in the early stages of dementia and we think had forgotten how to pay bills. Or possibly thought that my grandfather would pay them. (Except he had been dead 15 years.) We don’t really know.

Amazing what the government can and will do about claiming unpaid money when it is their money.

Bit difficult if your job is van driver or bus driver, for example. And not being able to prove ID as there's no valid licence or passport makes it much, much harder to get a job (cuts out a lot of roles that would be served by public transport, such as NHS, Education, Local Authorities and the like - the DBS checks are far more difficult when there isn't either of those documents (and many employers including those, will say 'sorry, no, not without passport and driving licence').

The thing is, it wouldn't take the removal of many driving licenses or charges on houses for it to become known that the new maintenance service doesn't take any shit.

Men don't pay (and the vast amount of non payers are men) because there are no consequences.

If the consequences actually were more likely than not more would pay.

Just as if it became socially unacceptable more men would pay.

If there was an actual real chance of losing your driving license, being seen as a dick by your mates and rejected by potential girlfriends the number of non payers would drop instantly.

Despite all the many many shit shows going on the uk and worldwide... this is very much in my top 5 top peeves and I would probably vote for anyone who would could sort it out
One thing the US sorts properly?

Don’t all come at me as I see things from both sides. Unfortunately there is never going to be a system that is fair for both sides.
I see a lot of comments moaning about reduction for other children bio or not. No one moans when the “mum” moves a new partner in that then helps support her children. Not all but it seems a lot of people want the men to stay single and not move on with their life when they can… I hate the fact that grown adults want other children to suffer just so theirs don’t. The reduction isn’t much.

not all but resident parents are just as bad as non paying parents as they will restrict contact so their payments are not reduced.

no one on here does their monthly budget on their gross salary, so who ever came up with that idea must of been on drugs. So I am not surprised men leave their jobs.

taking driving license or passport isn’t enough, many could live without so not really a scare tactic.

cms put my ex in arrears, he wasn’t he paid every month they upped his payment I gave him back the difference as cms was lying. cms put my partner in arrears made him pay extra after years of fighting proving they were wrong our fake arrears disappeared. Did he get a reduction for the over payment??? The only way he would get the money back was to take the ex wife to small claims court which would not of benefited the kids.

women will say the system is on the males side, males will say it’s on the women side… cms is not on either side especially children’s!!

so how do we make a system that is fair for everyone and have all Children’s best interests at the heart of it?

I think we should change the system tbh. Instead of it being a % of earnings at any given time it should be a decent flat rate per week, per month. That is truly sufficient to raise a child including childcare costs. And then that should be held as a debt in a similar way to a tuition loan for students. So the resident parent gets the money in the moment and then it is either paid fully at the time or at affordable rates for the non resident parent even if it takes them till their 90 to pay it. Welfare spending could also then be reduced as maintenance could reasonably be factored into household income.

The worst thing about the whole system is that, say one of my dc decided they wanted to live with their dad, legally I would have to pay about £300 a month maintenance to him. This is despite the fact that a) he wouldn’t be paying ME maintenance for our other child so it doesn’t cancel it out like it should, and b) he hasn’t paid proper maintenance in over 2 years.

Anyway it’ll never happen because no way he’d want one of the kids living with him. But it’s a joke.

Funny thing is I was a single parent bringing up 3 children, left the cheap council house and moved into private rented while only working part time. At the time I could of took my ex to cms (that started later due to his new partner) but I would rather him have money available to do things with the kids when they were occasionally in his care.

so when I say I see problems for both sides I am being honest.

No not really. What does “overpaying” really even mean in this context 🤷

To me over paying is paying more than a person can afford. It’s very easy to sit and say but it’s for the child. But if the paying parent can’t afford his rent or basic living conditions because his calculations as based on gross salary from the previous tax year than that clearly is “overpaying”

I Would hate to be the person that has to decide what a reasonable amount is needed. But every body deserves a basic standard of living

Society doesn’t yet shame men who abandon their children, I hope it does in the future. Some poor woman has married my ex and had more children with him, despite being fully aware of him never seeing or paying for his first child.

My case with CMS is a joke. It’s basically just an incorrect data gathering service, they never do anything to recover any money.

I think a better solution would be to privatise the service, hand it over to one of those parking eye type companies, they seem to be able to get money out of people.

Hang on, so non resident parents can have much more in savings and still escape maintenance than single parents can have in savings (6k to 19k, NEVER increased for inflation either by the way) before universal credit investigates them?

They are protecting men as usual.

That is scandalous.