How would you change child maintenance?

[CountessaExplainsItAll]

I’d make it direct pay as standard, coming from PAYE wages, like an unavoidable tax which is paid when they are.

I’d make arrears payable over the next tax year. If unpaid, assets should be seized.

I’d increase the percentage of salary paid by NRPs with no overnights significantly. NRPs who do weekly overnights have much higher costs than those who don’t.

I’d stop the reduction for NRPs living with other children they haven’t created or adopted.

I’d make maintenance count towards means-tested child benefits. If the NRP legitimately can’t pay (for instance because the parent is dead) then the state should.

I’d punish self-employed tax evaders more severely (not sure exactly how).

You?

That’s never been something that’s been suggested by any government or CMS so there’s never going to be support for something thats never been an option

There’s no political will for CMS to be more proactive generally because of the attitude toward single parents.

I, for one, doubt you’d ever find support for a system that had a set fee for children. The children of a premier league footballer shouldn’t live the same lifestyle as the children as a binman. Allowing very wealthy men to provide only basics for their children is no better a system than what we have now imo.

First and foremost society has to change generally and accept that all NRPs should be paying something. Once people change the mindset whereby they mean all people except their partner, their brother, their son, their pal because his ex is feckless/rich anyway/spend it on hair or nails then the basics of the current system works.

I don't think children need the same lifestyle in both homes, and I don't think income necessarily correlates to lifestyle.

Many people with high incomes live a frugal lifestyle. I would never buy Prada and certainly don't think designer labels are beneficial to children.

Tom's ex (let's call her Lauren), a receptionist, brought both children up in a council house. She didn't want to be subsidised to live Tom's lifestyle, she just wanted a fair contribution towards the essentials.

Lauren wanted to be able to pay for school uniforms, not Prada.

Generally here the six week prison sentence is suspended. So it’s normally used as a very last resort threat. According to this document from sept 2022- sept 2024 683 prison sentences were passed and all bar 4 were suspended.

in the same time 1 passport was suspended and 9 driving licenses.

(There was quite a push in 2023 on non payers, it it doesn’t seem to have lasted).

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10082/CBP-10082.pdf

I think the CMS set fee should be for all NRPs but with an upper earnings limit, at which point you go to court. Like it is at the moment. I think that kicks in when someone earns over 3k a week / £156k?

For everyone under that, I imagine the majority of people would be better off getting £200-250 a month per child, reduced by 1/3 per weekly overnight.

Some NRPs might be better off, but the majority wouldn’t.

What if it’s prada at mums and primark at dads?

say she’s the higher earner, or marries a premier league footballer, or inherits from her parents. Should she be contributing to dads household so they can have comparable lifestyles?

should they have to stay with dad in a bed sit while mum has a mortgage free 6 bed home? Or should she be paying him so he can afford at least a house for his children to stay in?

you can’t really insist on “comparable lifestyles” and only have it go one way. Many mums keep the family home while dad can only afford a houseshare or a small flat so he can pay cms.

My colleague pays CMS for his 3 kids, he has them every other weekend and half the holidays and earns about 42k. He currently pays £500/month.

Under the proposed set fee, he’d pay £250 per child per month x .66 for 1-2 overnights a week, which is… £500.

So same position. He is just covering the basics.

I know all this because he was complaining about considering a promotion, but that it’d mean his ex got more of a pay bump than he did.

How is that right? We need to reward productivity.

How is it fair that his ex receives twice the money that the government thinks is needed, from the government and her ex, and others only get one times the money?

Personally I’d use something like this https://www.minimumincome.org.uk/ to calculate the reasonable costs of raising children. I deduct the living cost of a single childless adult from the family cost to find the extra costs of children. Then divide it by 2 to reflect the fact that both parents should take equal responsibility. In cases of shared care the percentage of care the NRP has should be deducted from their 50% responsibility, I.e Absent parents pays 50% as maintenance, NRP who has shared care of 40% has their maintenance reduced to 10%.

More controversially, I’d also deduct any state benefits paid purely because of the existence of the children from the cost of raising them before splitting it between the parents.
MN being a predominantly female space means we often forget that there are mothers out there who aren’t supporting their children themself because the state does it for them.

Make the system fair for everyone.

I'm not sure what you mean about benefits.

Do you mean separated parents shouldn't get child benefit? That doesn't seem fair.

Haven’t rtft but I’d make earnings from
ltd companies where the NRP is the main shareholder liable for CMS.

i don’t know how. But there have been so many threads on this over thr years. It is fundamentally wrong that someone can draw out minimum pay and limited dividends to escape child maintenance and actually be accruing considerable wealth.

my ex runs a million £ business (profit). I got the minimum CSA for years. Was on the bones of my arse many many times. He had the wealth and showed it. Good accountancy and the business owning his assets, new wife also a partner etc, meant he only had to pay minimally.

just about broke me tbh. And yes I did ask for an investigation. Nothing happened.

If a mother isn't working because she is at home with small children, the benefits she receives are perfectly legitimate and constitutes her support. Once xhild is of school age, assuming no special circumstances, then yes she should be seeking work but she is not NOT providing for her children before that. She's caring for them.

No separated RP’s can get benefits, but if for example the cost of a child is £800 per month and benefits pay £500 then the remaining £300 should be split between both parents. It’s really not on that NRP’s are paying maintenance to cover costs that have already been met by benefit claims.

Ideally I think benefits should be reduced to reflect the contribution made by NRP’s, but as mentioned earlier by other posters that has been tried and caused issues when maintenance wasn’t paid.

coming from PAYE wages

That won't stop men from working cash-in-hand or just staying unemployed to avoid paying for their kids. The other injustice is that he pays the same total amount whether he has two kids or ten, so the money gets spread thinly for particularly feckless fathers.

There should be a statutory minimum payment - any NRP should be liable for paying £x per child (where x is half of the cost of feeding, housing and clothing a kid to an acceptable standard), regardless of their declared means or other kids they have. If you choose to father ten kids you should be responsible for at least half of the cost of raising each of those ten kids.

If personal circumstances justify higher payments then the courts would still be able to authorise that.

I’d love to know how it works in other countries and if there’s a good system we could copy.

i also don’t understand why this doesn’t have a higher profile. There was a massive outcry about slow driving license and passport issue so why not this?

I felt so desperate at one point I emailed the guardian to see if press would pick the issue generally up but they didn’t.

The MIS I linked to includes childcare costs, so the NRP’s maintenance contribution would cover 50% of that so that single parents would be more able to work after they finish maternity leave.

I’m not single now, but I do have to work permanent 12hr nights at weekends to fit around DP’s Mon-Fri 9-5 office job, I’ve also been a single parent in the past so I know how hard it is, but they’re my children and I should pay for them unless there’s genuinely no alternative. Wanting to stay at home with under 5’s is, unfortunately, a luxury most of us can’t afford.

That’s bonkers. Part of what CMS legitimately pays for are the child’s housing needs, and being warm and clean etc - so bills! These aren’t payable on a CMS debit card.

I would introduce prison terms for long term non payers. As an last resort- and the debt is still not wiped by it.

Loss of driving licence as an alternative disposal.

Both of those things are already possible.

Prison sentences are usually suspended in the first instance (they’re usually around 6 weeks).

There is a real reluctance to remove driving licenses because of the impact it can have on work, but tbh if someone neglects their child by not paying repeatedly then, imo, they should suffer the consequences of that. Especially if losing their license just makes getting to work inconvenient or difficult. I can understand being reluctant to ban a lorry or taxi driver - but perhaps a short ban impacting their income could be a good thing.

It’s an issue that primarily impacts women.

its the only reason I can think of for it not being higher profile.

You can bet your bottom dollar if the CMS system glitched and charged NRPs double for a while it would be a huge issue.

I think deducting it at source is a good idea. But if a man wants a woman to have an abortion and she chooses not to, I would give an opt-out clause for men to sign so they don’t get stuck paying for a child they didn’t want.

(Yes I know everyone is responsible for contraception etc…)

I think it should be minimum and then sliding scale ontop to give comparable life for the child in both homes.

So hypothetically:

John and Sue have a child.

Then they split up.
Then they meet new partners.

John's new partner is a barrister, Sue's new partner works at Lidl.

How would you (or even should you) ensure that the child had the same lifestyle in both homes?

I was recently reading about children in Africa who were tracing their fathers who had served in the foriegn armed forces. I believe a company was using DNA & ancestry type tools to track the father's down. The children were looking for a blood, wider family connection. Some of the children and mothers were also looking for child maintenance.

In the past, I suspect that many men were not accountable for their actions.

This same story can be applied to many other countries where armed forces have been stationed.

The world is becoming a much smaller place with the invention of DNA, internet, forensics...

A lot of RPs think maintenance should cover all the costs of the child, or even half the costs, without considering their own contribution and the fact the NRP is also running their own house.

Unless there’s no overnights at all (in which case a much higher percentage should be paid), both parents have to pay mortgage/rent, council tax, travel costs, standing rates for utilities, clothes for their own house, etc.

Maintenance should be a contribution to the extras on top of that. So extra food, extra childcare, extra clothes. Not everything.

This is 100% correct but until the mindset of some RPs changes, no new system would ever be deemed fair.

I think your ideas are great. I also think the Germans have got it right. The state pays child maintenance & the non resident parent then owes the state.

I couldn't agreed more.

Unfortunately I do suspect that’d lead to more late stage abortions and infanticide.