Time and time again, Gingerbread hears from single parents who are fighting a failing system - the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) - to secure accurate maintenance payments for their child. Child maintenance can help to give a child a decent quality of life by providing vital assistance for everyday expenses – such food, clothing, travel, and school costs. Money isn't everything, but children don't come free.
Our Maintenance Matters campaign has recently exposed some of the loopholes in the CMS that allow paying parents to avoid paying maintenance based on their true income. One common issue is that paying parents with often considerable assets can end up paying a bare minimum, since several sources of income aren't taken into consideration by the CMS. In other cases, self-employed parents are able to get away with under-reporting their income in order to reduce their payments. Our latest report 'Children deserve more' highlights the struggles many single parents face in their fight to get true financial resources taken into account for child maintenance.
Although the CMS is trying to work with HMRC to understand paying parents' taxable data, the reality is that this isn't happening for some families. Parents who have questioned their calculations with the CMS are told to contact HMRC. But often little support or resource is given to find a solution.
It's clear that some of the changes to child maintenance system have been designed for administrative ease, rather than to work in the best interests of children. For example, safeguards that were in place against maintenance avoidance and evasion have been dropped. Although receiving parents can query payments by applying for a 'variation' on specific grounds, they still have to prove their ex has hidden financial resources. As a result, parents have to turn into private investigators in order to push the CMS to take action. To add insult to injury, parents are often kept in the dark about the options they have to challenge maintenance payments.
Lee, a mother whose story is similar to others we hear at Gingerbread said: "It's made me an ace private investigator against my nature. I've turned up all the evidence – jobs, company directorships, director's loans, payslips, spending, assets – everything you can think of. I turned the spotlight on the loopholes he used to claim he had no earnings despite having a job, and built up a stack of evidence as thick as your arm."
The government says that it is catering for all circumstances, and is working closely with HMRC to identify and prevent maintenance evasion. But in the vein of simplifying their service and saving on administrative costs, children are losing out.
Gingerbread is calling for the Department for Work and Pensions to have a comprehensive strategy to combat evasion and avoidance to ensure children do not go without.
Gingerbread has lots of helpful advice and information about this issue. So if you think your child maintenance calculation is wrong or you don't think the full circumstances are being taken into account, please take a look at advice for cases still under the Child Support Agency (CSA) as well as cases now under the new CMS.
You can help Gingerbread spread the word about this failing CMS by sharing the campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
Since the launch Maintenance Matters last year, we've made amazing progress. We've galvanised support across the political divide and continue to work with single parents to share their stories. Now with a newly elected government, we want to support more single parents to engage with their MP and campaign on the issues that matter to them.
Check out Gingerbread's new campaign toolkit for more tips and advice on how to campaign.