Child Maintenance

[FlyAwayBaby]

Hi, sorry I couldn’t find a topic for this!

My husband is the paying parent on a CMS case. It is by direct pay but through the CMS.

There were 2 children on the case, now aged 19 and 16. There has been no contact since the mother took the children and moved away a decade ago and opted not to tell my husband or leave details even though we were having them every other week at that point.

When the first child left high school they apparently started college but a year of payments later we had a letter stating we’d massively overpaid as she had lied about him being in college.

The last child left school last summer, we have no idea what they are doing but the annual review arrived in December saying “we’ve worked out your payments for the next 12 months” but there were no figures on it. Nothing. No mention of payments. We paid December as usual, but have now noticed that under “case details” there are now no children’s names at all just the RPs name. The portal says no payments due and £0.00 should have been paid since the review.

So, what does this mean?! Surely if they’d left education the case would be closed now not sitting there open but with nothing happening? We don’t want to overpay (again!!) to the mother but equally don’t want to NOT pay if this is a mistake. Online messages are no longer an option and we’ve been unable to get through on the phone and the next (quite large) standing order is due to go out Monday!

Basically, what does the CMS do if they know from child benefit that the child has left education but the RP won’t answer the phone or letters (that’s what she always did). It literally says

My children’s details

name Other patent
Jane Doe* (real name)

Sorry that was supposed to have spacing!

under children’s names is a blank space with the mothers name then under the other parent section.

I wouldn’t pay but maybe keep the money aside.

It may be that payments have been stopped until the overpayments have been "repaid" by no payments. But would also recommend keeping the money to one-side until you have managed to confirm the position.

Thank you. The overpayment was 2021, payments for the 2022 year were reduced to pay us back, there is still some owing but that shouldn’t stop the payments. The only thing I can think is that they know the child has left education but cannot contact the RP to close the case. We will put the money aside for now but I’d really love to know what’s happening as I fear getting put into collect and pay for missing payments when it’s not our fault.