196,400 reasons to pay your child maintenance
27/03/2007
We are taking quicker and firmer action against parents who fail to pay
child maintenance. We are also looking into thousands of cases where
parents have avoided paying what they owe for their children over many
years.
Why you should pay your child maintenance
The CSA is changing as part of a long-term project that is looking at every aspect of child maintenance. However, it will be some time before a new system will be in place. Until then we will be helping the Government to get tougher on parents who avoid their financial responsibilities to their children.
There's no hiding place
We have a number of powers to help track down parents who avoid us.
We are using information held by other government departments, such as HM Revenue & Customs and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (the DVLA).
If we still can't find them by doing this, 8,000 of our employees can search information from credit reference agencies. Private sector specialist tracing companies are also helping us with particularly difficult cases.
It is a criminal offence if someone fails to give us information or gives us information that they know is false. We can take them to court and they could be fined up to £1,000.
If the non-resident parent does not give us the information we need to work out child maintenance, we apply a rate based on the number of children they should be paying child maintenance for. This is called a ‘default maintenance decision’and in many cases this works out higher than if we worked out how much they should pay using their net weekly income.
We will continue to take enforcement action to get them to pay this amount, unless they provide us with the information we need.
The legal action we can take
If the non-resident parent has a job the first thing we try is to take the money direct from their wages. For new cases we aim to do this within four months from when we first told them what they should pay.
An employer is required by law to take maintenance from parents' wages if we tell them to. Currently 160,000 parents pay child maintenance this way.
If this does not work we will start by applying to the courts for a liability order for the missed child maintenance. This allows us to take legal action to get the money owed. Between October 2005 and October 2006 12,900 liability orders were granted. This is up from 10,500 between March 2005 and March 2006.
The legal action we can then take will depend on each case and we can use more than one at a time.
- In summer 2006 we started working with private debt-collection agencies to collect money from parents who had not paid for a number of months, or years. Their bailiffs act on our behalf to seize the parent's belongings and sell them to get the money owed. So far 23,000 parents have had their cases pursued by private debt collectors.
- We can take a range of action through the courts. 13,000 parents were presented with a summons and taken to court between October 2005 and October 2006. This might include getting a third-party debt order to freeze money belonging to or owed to the parent. This stops them from using their bank account or getting money from an unpaid invoice if they are self-employed and we can then ask for the child maintenance to be paid.
- If we can prove to a magistrate that the parent has refused to pay the child maintenance they owe, we can apply to have their driving licence taken away or for them to be sent to prison. Between October 2005 and October 2006 400 parents received immediate or suspended prison terms. Even if the parent is disqualified from driving or sent to prison, they will still have to pay all the money they owe.
