MNHQ here: Tell us what you think about the Child Maintenance Service

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee has launched an inquiry into the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) and its effectiveness in ensuring regular payments for children and will consider recommendations to improve the service overall.

The Committee is inviting submissions addressing the following points:

• How well is the CMS performing for children and parents? How could it be improved?

• What problems do parents face – both for the parent with care and the non-resident parent?

• Are levels of child maintenance set correctly?

• What powers does the CMS have and how effectively are they used? How effective is enforcement action?

• What will happen to CSA arrears or unresolved cases when parents move to the new CMS?

• How might the CMS deal with any weaknesses or loopholes in the old CSA system?

• Are there any opportunities for Government departments to work together to ensure regular payment?

• Is there any international evidence on ways of ensuring parents regularly contribute to their children’s maintenance payments?

Please share your thoughts and experiences below, or if you prefer, you can respond directly to the Committee via this link.

Please note that the deadline for submissions is Monday 5 September 2016.

Thanks
MNHQ

It is dreadful. My ex moved us onto the cms in a bid to cause confusion and get out of paying and it has worked. He owed ££££ in arrears through csa and I was promised this would transfer over to cms. It hasn't.
He has told them he doesn't do overtime, he does and I have proof but they listen to him, so the amount of maintenance I get is less than I should.
After 8 years of court, csa wrangling, non payments and him doing what he possibly could to avoid paying for his children I requested collect and pay as I reasoned that 98%of something is better than 100% of nothing but was told no as my ex didn't agree to it. It was eventually agreed (after hours on the phone) that if he missed one payment it would switch over to collect and pay. He of course didn't pay as agreed, lied to cms claiming he didn't know my bank details (he's had them since 1997 and I had proof). All their letters to him had mysteriously gone missing and he was believed. I was told that with all their protocol of him being allowed extra time to pay, then a letter going out (this alone could take a week) and him being allowed 3 weeks to reply before the whole circus starting again if questions were to be answered etce etc I should allow at least SIX months to pass before I could expect any money.
In my opinion it works for the absent parent and not for the children or the parent struggling to bring them up on their own.

So to summerize as far as the CMS are concerned penis = always tell the truth and vagina = liar.

I have been reading this he stories on here with utter horror.

I realise that we live in a patriarchy with respect to political power but there must be men who grew up with feckless fathers or became stepfathers who see this financially abusive behaviour first hand.

The CMS clearly have no money or drive to pursue this. Non-payment of CM needs to become a criminal act. It needs to go on people's credit scores and it needs to be a criminal offence and the current outstanding amounts need to be sold to private debt collectors so that the children can have access to this money immediately.

Question to MPs - how long would you accept not having your wages paid? If your wages weren't paid in, you could earn money elsewhere but children can not. It is totally unacceptable that people wait months and years for payment. A landlord or bank would be taking non-payers to court quickly. You need to do the same with feckless non-resident payers quickly.

CMS haven't sent myself or my ex a payment schedule for this year (he pays me direct by standing order). When i called them they said he should, from this month, be paying £53 MORE per month than he payed last year. And yes their computer shows they haven't sent any letters to that effect to either of us, nor a payment schedule to either of us. But no, they can't send a payment schedule to either of us at this time.
So how the fuck am i supposed to get the extra £53, and when they do their review next year will they actually chase him for arrears given that they never told him he needed to pay that amount?
It's fucking stupid.

More needs to be done to extract money from NRP when they clearly have the lifestyle to suggest they have a lot of money but are paying nothing or very little because they can claim to be unemployed (and living of ‘hidden’ family money) or self employed and earning very little.

It is also wrong that NRP only pays 16%. If RP contributed only 16% of their salary towards bringing up the children they would be arrested for child neglect.

There needs to be consequences such as financial penalties or even jail terms for NRP who cheat the system and try to get out or pay low amounts for child maintenance.

I think you only have to look at the difference between the way welfare reform and child maintenance reform are handled to see the huge disparity here.

Welfare reform is seen as saving the public money, and there are plenty of policies there that risk placing families, including those with children, in poverty. A lone parent of job seeker's allowance, for example, is at risk of being sanctioned which directly affects the ability to provide for their children.

In contrast, child maintenance reform is seen as a "private" issue that only affects each individual family, and one of its central goals seems to be to avoid placing the paying parent in poverty even if they are single with no other dependents - WHY is this, when the government through welfare reform is willingly placing families with children into poverty?

I think it's short-sighted for child maintenance not to be considered a public spending issue - if my XP had for example paid even £50 a week (ie, 25% of full time NMW as we have three chilren), rather than the actual amount he paid which was £5, then I might have been able to return to work earlier, or to offer my children more enriching or extra-curricular activities (and given that poor white boys have the worst educational outcomes that might have been priceless), or able to provide any number of opportunities which in the long term would save public money either through my own increased ability to work or through increasing my children's attainment (tbh it would just have been nice to be able to replace worn out clothes as soon as required but that's by the by)

So if we take a leaf from welfare reform, the first thing I would suggest is that NRPs are assumed as a minimum to be capable of working full time for NMW and at a minimum should be assessed as if that's what they're earning. If they have caring responsibilities or health issues, these can be assessed in the same way as for benefit claimants. If they're genuinely not working full time, they can attend the job centre and be forced to look for work in the same way the JSA/Universal Credit recipients are. If they don't attend, the debt racks up each week that it's not paid, and it's enforced and it's taken from wages or bank accounts and it is treated like a debt to the government.

(Personally I think what should happen is that the government pays the assessed amount to the PWC and then chases the NRP for the debt like a council tax debt to ensure the children get the benefit of the money continuously and immediately, but that's never going to happen.)

If I can be expected to work increasing hours to support my children as they get older, as a lone parent of 3 with literally 100% of the caring responsibilities, then why is their father not also expected to be working his backside off to provide for them when he has none of those restrictions?

It's about that central idea - you should provide for your children. If government policy is to push and push welfare reform (including tax credits) with the expectation of people working fulltime unless they've been given an exemption, then it should be exactly the same for NRPs.

The system needs tightening up

There needs to be a public drive to make non-payment of maintenance as shameful as drink driving, driving without seatbelts etc as non-payment means they are neglecting their children and they should be treated as such. A RP would never get away with neglecting their children, a NRP shouldn't be allowed to do it either

There needs to be much tougher penalties for non-payment of maintenance such as fines, receiving a CCJ, removal of driving licence and/or passport

The CMS needs to be much more proactive in collecting late payments

Where abusive behaviour can be evidenced the RP should not have to lose the 4% in monthly payments

A parent should support the children they already have before having more, maintenance should not be reduced when they move in with a person with existing children or procreating more of their own

Laws and regulations should be tightened up so that it is not possible to play the system the way many NRPs are doing

Poverty has been shown to be severely detrimental to the development and life chances of children, it is imperative the government clamp down on the non-payment of maintenance

I don't believe in privatisation in general, but in this case I think child maintenance should be run by debt collectors from the start.... The government should pay the rp from the start and then collect the debt or treat it as owed tax

Child maintenance needs to be linked to tax and collected the same with the same penalities if not adhered to - prison and fines for not paying, not paying on time.

Relationships break down for many reasons and most the time the man moves out and has to find a place to live and start over. They need money for that.for a new household whether that's renting a room or a crappy one bed flat.they can't be living on the streets. They also still need to pay for their kids though but there has to be a calculation to make it fair.
On this thread there are loads of stories about ex's not paying enough or at all which is not ok.
My oh had children before me and always has paid what the csa worked out, we struggle with that. some months more than others. Before I had dc's we would always buy the kids extra things, clothes, shoes, coats etc as often as we could afford because we wanted to provide for them. Once we had dc's together we still paid what the csa said but the extras were not as regular, only when we could afford to.
I think most these problems seems to be people being self employed and hiding their earnings. If you don't pay when you have a 'normal' job they take it straight from your pay.
I think the system works but if the tax bods were talking to the csa the self employed people wouldn't be able to hide?

The number of nights system is a stupid basis of calculation and encourages dads to fight for extra nights rather than a pattern that works for the children

Why oh why do they just get PAYE figures from h

HMRC unless you ask them to get full earning details (eg dividends etc)????

Why are only earnings taken into account and not other assets?

It encourages dads like my children's to earn lots of money "off the books" so he can fund a very nice life while puportedly earning very little

If you think the system works well, then that is because you are wilfully ignoring the voices of the mostly women who are being shafted by it.

3/5 of lone parents get no maintenance at all. Not 10%, not a quarter, not a minority - a majority, three whole fifths. Let that sink in.

I can't think of any system anywhere in the world, where a 3/5 failure rate is considered the sign of a system that works.

Before I had dc's we would always buy the kids extra things, clothes, shoes, coats etc as often as we could afford because we wanted to provide for them. Once we had dc's together we still paid what the csa said but the extras were not as regular, only when we could afford to.

But what you're admitting to here is that your OH chose to reduce how much he provided for his existing children to the bare legal minimum - set at a level that the other parent would be prosecuted for capping their contribution at - in order to have further children with you. Why is that OK?

Nottoobad £4 billion is owed in child support. It's a staggering sum. This money would make the world of difference to children all around the country. I know from reading on here that many mothers do not bother with CSA as their abusive ex will make them pay for it in other ways.
If your husband can not afford child support (a meagre 16%) then he can not afford more children. (I'm assuming that this wasn't because of something temporary like redundancy. If he cant afford 16%, how do you think his ex affords to pay more than 16%?
When a relationship breaks down women have to work out how to make up the man's financial and childcare contribution so has much higher costs too. CSA amounts do not include childcare and the financial burden of this often falls on the mother.

Maybe channel 5 should do some programs focused on CM, a few special investigators into none paying men and this child support service chasing them etc. Bring it into the spotlight and give benefits a rest

Agree thegruffalo I don't think it is ok for absent dads to have more children when they can then only afford to give the bare minimum to existing ones. Nothing laudable about that story at all.

What problems do parents face?
My DH and I had to pay for his 3 'daughters' despite the fact their DM refused to do DNA. (He did want to see them and be in their lives but they chose not to see him and their mother encouraged this).
No problem paying maintenance but £360 a month when we had DSD, DS and bills to pay, was financially crippling.
They only stopped arresting his wages when we reported their DM for benefit fraud-claiming for them living at home when one owned own house, one was working and the other was kicked out at 14 and in care.
So, while I empathise with mothers struggling to get payment, theres the fathers side as well. He was happy to pay and see the kids, but courts and CSA didnt take this into account in any way.

Why 'daughters' in inverted commas? Does he actually not believe they were his? Why was he paying for all 3 rather than telling the CSA that 2 weren't living with the mother? Based on providing for 3 children, do you really believe £360 a month is excessive? It's only £120 per child. Far less than the RP would be paying to keep them cared for.

Throwingpebbles, some nrp want to see there kids more and have them overnight because they want to love them, not to pay less.don't tar all nrp with the same brush.Plus we don't pay the bare minimum.I never said my story was laudable.and oh is not an absent dad.
Ask basil, I don't think it works well. I think it works but not for those who are self employed apparently.
Thegruffolo, yes I think it is ok. Of course it is.why should nrp' s not be allowed to start a new life.we paid well over the figures quoted on this thread.not sure where 16% came from.oh's ex was fine.financially amicable.I don't need to go into it in detail. I didn't 'admit' to anything. As if I have done something wrong. I just expressed my opinion and shared my personal experience. Mumsnet has a history of going after posters like dogs when they disagree.
Eyebrows, as I have said we paid more than that percentage.but yes of course a nrp should be able to have a second family. We waited ten years.
An ex friend told me she deliberately got pregnant.she wanted to be a mum so after going out with new boyf for 3 months she stopped taking the pill and didn't tell him obviously. he was a decent bloke who thought he loved her and once the baby was 3 months old she kicked him out saying he was just a sperm donor and she has been awful ever since.messing about with contact and being abusive.he has always paid and always will.he had to move back in with family.he is only 23. He is unlikely to earn enough at his min wage job to rent round here.if he happens to meet someone he can trust and want to make a life with her it will be alot harder.of course when kids come along it will be harder still.most the posters are men haters on this thread.sure they seem to have shit dads as ex's but they are not all like that.and I guess this guy should just work and have a miserable life with no second chance of happiness.
I don't even know how someone doesn't pay csa?surely they take it straight from your wages if you don't? Are all these non payers self employed or on benefits?

"See more" needn't mean more nights though and that is where the current emphasis is wrong. It encourages set ups where the child constantly shuttles between houses rather than one main home and lots of contact.
And ffs can we move away from talking about what the NRP "wants". Such an inappropriate emphasis. Mines dad always uses language about what he "wants". Never occurs to him to put the interests of the children first.

"Of course they should be able to have a second family" not if they can't even provide for their first family!!!

(And yes, I live with my lovely DP who puts is NR kids first and would love to see more of them but also recognises their need for a sensible pattern. I would love another child with him but not if it harms the quality of life of our existing children)

Oh give over Nottoobad, I didn't go after you like a dog, I disagreed with your opinion. And I still do. £360 for 3 children goes nowhere near meeting 50% of their needs. No matter how long you waited, he did choose to put a new family before his existing children. Unless of course you can say honestly that he spends no more than £120 each month on each of the children you've had together?

When a couple have a child, they pay - no matter what their earnings - the basics at least. Housing, utilities, food, clothes. This adds up to a fair amount, but all over the country, people go without in order to ensure their children are provided for.

Why are nrps allowed to pay a fiver a week? Why aren't they expected to pay half the actual cost of keeping their children?

In a family which has not split, one parent losing their income means that the family tighten their belts, but not that the children suddenly only get a tenner a week spent on them. The parents have to find the cost of keeping a home, food, warmth and clothing, and the parents will go without in order to do that for their children.

Why is it that a nrp can pretend to be a low paid self-employed worker and so only pay a few quid, if that, when their lifestyle shows they must be earning more?

The cost per child should be set at, say, child benefit level. And the nrp should have to pay that. There are deadbeat dads who would rather be unemployed because then they don't have to give their ex any money. Maybe if they knew that they would always have to pay properly for their children they would make a bit more effort.

That's probably completely unreasonable, and there'll be a million reasons why it wouldn't work or be fair. Please feel free to castigate me if you want to. It just pisses me off so much that so many single parents are left in such difficult circumstances