Child maintenance

[Steph225]

When you report that you haven’t received a payment how long does it take for child maintenance service to contact the other parent? When they actually contact the other parent will that show up on the “track changes”? Whenever I check online nothing has changed, no update, arrears still £0, it’s been nearly 2 weeks now, am I being too impatient? I don’t have any sort of contact with the other parent as he can be very abusive, but child maintenance service is taking forever to sort this out and I’m starting to wonder whether I should get in touch with my dc father instead? The only way to report the missed payment was to request to change to collect and pay, apparently it will take months?? I don’t really know what to do.

Yeah it’s only been two weeks I think you are being a bit impatient they are not the fastest! Maybe he’s lost his job?

Yeah 2 weeks is honestly nothing when you are dealing with CMS, although totally appreciate it feels like it at the time. They are extremely slow & it could easily be months.

You need to call them every week. They will take forever as they are never held accountable. Tell them you are concerned nothing is being done, ask for a call back from your case handler, ask them what action they are taking, ask for time frames, make them accountable, raise a complaint if it drags on beyond time scales given. They have the power to enforce action, but unless you press your case, you'll generally be in for a long, long, long wait.