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?

Some of the comments on the thread are despicable. I grew up as a child of a father who abandoned me and got away with paying next to nothing. He was wealthy. I really struggled, everything was hard. We didn’t have enough food. Nothing going on, no clubs, sports, hobbies, money for university, anything. Just pure survival and getting through the days. Mum was working FT and I had to look after myself. It was awful knowing he had a new family benefitting from a better life and the sense of rejection and injustice was incredibly painful, still is tbh.

I will add that in the days of the early internet when people were more likely to use names that could be decoded, I found him on some F4J-type message board giving it about ‘the system’. It was so painful. He abandoned us utterly and paid next to nothing. His seat in hell is reserved but why do these fathers not face the societal shame of having more children that they can’t or refuse to fund? The cost to the taxpayer is immense and it’s never a topic of political debate.

I've always got maintenance, worked part time and got some benefits. I've never had a holiday. Get a trim a few times a year.

I'm married to an NRP and I totally think there are faults in the system for both parents.

However, I also think that parents who don't pay for their kids should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

It's very easy to avoid this by paying what you owe.

Where did you find this data? Many thanks 🙏🏼

I know two nrp dads

one pays over a grand a month despite having shared care (this is above the csa minimum). He also pays half of costs like uniforms, activities for kids etc. his ex doesn’t work and hasn’t for 16 years, so his kids are funded between him and the state.

the other uses to pay direct to his ex but she took him to cms and said he’d never paid so he now has a huge payment, which is being deducted from earnings. He’s struggling to survive.

i sympathise with both.

CMS does not charge arrears from before the case was opened, so it would make no difference if they were told he'd never paid.

If it is one child it will be 12% of his pre-tax (after pension) income, reduced by 1/7 for every overnight he has the child per week.

If he is "struggling to survive" he needs to manage his money better.

Oh, and they will only deduct from earnings if the NRP did not pay as agreed by direct pay- as the RP, you can't just request that. You have to show that there are missed payments over a period of time.

You feel sorry for a man who voluntarily pays over CMS minimum, and one who has made up a story in order to sound like a good dad?

False….My partner was put on collect a pay… 6 months later it was removed and my partner was compensated for the error. The compensation did not cover anywhere near the extra he had to pay.

the ex lied, 6 months of fighting it. Ok we proved it but just another case of showing cms doesn’t have either side best interest at heart. Should never of happened, did the ex get in trouble…Nope

Shocking.

I am going through this at the moment. My ex unexpectedly left in September, i filed for child support the day after. I got my first payment in January, it wasnt the full payment. I reported it, February came, got my second payment also not in full (doesnt bode well does it) I couldnt report that as they were still working on Januarys, so I rang them. They've changed the service to "collect and pay", meaning I have to pay extra as my ex refuses to pay the correct amount (only 4%, but still) and he pays an extra 20%. My next payment (bearing in my mind my last one was 1st February and not the entire payment) is 29th April... How does that make sense.

Yes, they make mistakes from time to time, but @NotMajorTom 's friend was not immediately put on Collect and Pay for no reason at the outset of the claim, that just didn't happen.

If he as placed on Collect and Pay then he would have been informed why, and if it was a mistake he'd be fighting it.

That's interesting.

I once suggested that on here - unaware any country did this - and had many posts saying the man could die leaving the state money - I said well they could then claim againts his estate and assets - to be told that wasn't fair to the estates heirs.

IME it's often seems to be socially acceptable to pay nothing or very little for their kids.

Can the second guy not just sent his bank statement to CMS?

I genuinely don’t understand why they can’t catch self employed people. Do all these parents fail to do a self assessment tax return?

if yes then why can’t the CMS join the dots - all the information is there!

If no- and none of these absent dads are paying tax then Surely that would be a magnificent way to catch tax fraud too: Mum says “DC’s dad is mysteriously living the life of Riley whilst apparently not earning any income.” CMS asks hmrc who does an investigation and reviews bank accounts and discovers he’s funding a lifestyle that doesn’t align with someone with no income.

Seems like they could kill two birds with one stone - clamp down on fraud and sort out CMS.

One of my passtimes during lockdown was going onto F4J type sites and watching all of the men complaining about how they became self employed to avoid paying maintenence by not declaring their proper income, but the government only compensated the wages they declared, not their actual earnings. It was a beautiful thing.

I worked in payroll for a while. I remember one case where a CMS office wrote to us about an attachment of earnings, but the form was blank with no name or NI number. So i called the office and quoted the ref on the letter - it took me an hour and twenty minutes and three different people to tell me that due to a computer error the letter was generated wrongly - the case WAS legitimate but the letter reference was the internal reference not the one I needed, so they couldn’t talk to me about it.

They recommended I send a letter (at my company expense) to explain and ask for the correct letter.

I said, “look - I want this child to get the money their parent owes. You sent me the wrong letter - can’t you just send me the correct letter since I’ve literally just told you we will process it if you tell me who I’m supposed to deduct the money from”

The answer was that eventually the CMS would try writing to me again. They never did.

The whole thing stank of incompetence and inefficiency. I am not surprised the system is broken - the service is inept and just following rules with no brains behind it.

There's a range of methods they use, including only declaring a small part of their income and taking the rest as cash payments and paying their new partner a big salary whilst paying themselves next to nothing.

I'd just work out what half of the minimum cost of raising a child is and charge this amount. If you can't afford it then you need to wear a condom.

The other thing I'd change is the reductions, which don't make sense. If you have 1 overnight, you pay 6/7, 2 is 5/7, 3 is 4/7 and 3.5 is 0. I'd reduce by 1/3 for every overnight and just be very clear that children shouldn't be packing bags between homes, except for a few personal items, and that any time you have your child you should have everything they need.

Why do you feel sorry for them?

Dad 1 obviously earns a very good wage and will have more than enough to spare for himself.
Dad 2 needs to provide evidence to the CMS that he has been paying his ex. Uploading screenshots of bank statements is very easy to do on the CMS portal.

In any case, just because there are some NRP dads who do pay what they should, that’s not what this thread is about, and frankly it’s irrelevant.

I never said it was immediate. Yes he faught it but it’s a losing battle with an organisation tha is not fit for purpose and doesn’t do the right thing for either party.

rp’s can lie and get NRPs to pay when they’ve already paid. It’s a mistake but it happens

the other uses to pay direct to his ex but she took him to cms and said he’d never paid so he now has a huge payment, which is being deducted from earnings. He’s struggling to survive.

I’ll take ‘things that never happened’ for £500 please!

There are so many people, women in particular whether that be relatives or new partners of these shitty men, who will readily believe the obviously bullshit stories that irresponsible fathers come out with. This is largely why the men don’t live in shame as they should.

Exactly. My ex used to pay me directly then decided to stop when he moved in with his girlfriend and said he had to support her 5 dc. I stupidly waited a year before I went to CmS. They were very clear that they cannot chase for maintenance prior to them being involved.

Well, it’s just another shit, inept, inefficient government department isn’t it? Why are we even surprised.

also how is it that they can’t find self employed people to chase for maintenance but HMRC would soon find them if they hadn’t submitted a self assessment, accounts or had tax outstanding!

Fucking useless.

Not disagreeing that they’re generally ineffective, but my cousin’s ex has owed her £9k for years. CMS took it out of his bank account and paid her just before Xmas.. She’s gobsmacked. She’s been waiting around 12 years.

@DaffyDuckz

I genuinely don’t understand why they can’t catch self employed people. Do all these parents fail to do a self assessment tax return?

Because HMRC are utterly inept and useless dealing with people who submit false SA tax returns or never register self employed in the first place. It's part of the reason why the "Black economy" costs the country billions every single year. HMRC have been as much use as a chocolate fireguard ever since Brown amalgamated the different tax departments and presided over the closure and centralisation of the tax offices. Back in the 80s and 90s, it was very common place for self employed and small businesses to have physical inspections of their "books" by tax inspectors, whether for VAT, PAYE or income tax. Since the noughties, barely any get inspected anymore. I run a small accountancy practice and have had less than a handful of tax investigations for my clients over the past 25 years!! It's an utter disgrace that HMRC are so incompetent. It's no surprise that the CSA can't use SA returns as a basis for child maintenance as a lot of the deadbeat Dads are probably either not declaring all their income ( so tax evasion as well as CMS evasion) or havn't even registered as self employed in the first place - and lots will also be illegally claiming unemployment and/or other benefits as well.

HMRC and CSA need to get a grip as the problem gets worse each year as official statistics (i.e. black economy) demonstrate.