Promises Unkept: Unpaid Child Maintenance and the Price of Inaction

Unpaid child maintenance remains one of the most persistent and under-addressed financial injustices affecting separated families in England and Wales. Despite statutory obligations and the purported authority of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), millions of pounds in maintenance remain uncollected, leaving primary carers, predominantly women, and their children in financial precarity. This issue is not simply administrative or procedural; it is legal and economic. For legal professionals operating within the financial remedies landscape, the failures of the CMS should not be viewed as peripheral. Rather, they destabilise the very integrity of financial provision for children post-separation.

The legal framework: courts sidestepped, parents trapped

The child maintenance system in England and Wales was designed to shift routine maintenance disputes away from the courts. The Child Support Act 1991 introduced a statutory scheme, now operated by the CMS, with the aim of simplifying and standardising child support assessments. With the 2003 reforms, the jurisdiction of the family courts was effectively ousted in most cases involving maintenance for children under 16 (or under 20 if in full-time education).

In principle, the CMS provides a formula-based calculation for child maintenance and various service routes, such as ‘Direct Pay’ and ‘Collect and Pay’. Where cooperation fails or payments lapse, the CMS has statutory powers to enforce compliance, bypassing the need for court involvement.

Yet the legal architecture has created an enforcement vacuum. Once within the CMS regime, parents are often barred from seeking enforcement in the family courts. In cases of non-payment, receiving parents are left to rely on the CMS’s limited enforcement tools, which are frequently too slow, too discretionary or too ineffective to provide meaningful redress.

The enforcement crisis: powers that are rarely used

On paper, the CMS has significant enforcement powers: it can deduct maintenance directly from wages or bank accounts, seize passports, disqualify driving licences, or even apply for committal to prison. In practice, however, these powers are exercised inconsistently and only after prolonged delay.

As of the most recent data, £690m in unpaid child maintenance debt is outstanding, most of it owed under the current CMS scheme. Around half of parents on ‘Collect and Pay’ do not pay the full amount due. While the CMS holds an array of enforcement mechanisms, in the quarter March 2025, only 69% of paying parents using collect and pay, paid some maintenance, the same as quarter to March 2024. Additionally, in the same quarter ending March 2025, 31% of paying parents paid no maintenance under the collect and pay service. 28% of paying parents in this same time period had a deduction from earnings order in place. Committal proceedings remain rare and are often avoided for fear of being seen as draconian or ineffective.

Worse still, the CMS frequently fails to escalate enforcement promptly. Parents report months of inaction after missed payments, during which arrears build up and financial pressure deepens. Administrative errors, miscommunication and systemic under-resourcing further compromise outcomes. For many, what is perceived as the CMS’s inaction signals that compliance with maintenance obligations is optional.

Socio-economic consequences: poverty by design

The consequences of unpaid maintenance are stark. Receiving parents, often mothers, must absorb the financial shortfall, often while shouldering the majority of childcare responsibilities. Research consistently shows that regular maintenance payments significantly reduce child poverty rates – and help to keep 160,000 children out of poverty each year. Conversely, non-payment perpetuates disadvantage, pushing many families closer to the edge.

Unpaid child maintenance is not simply an issue of private debt; it represents a transfer of cost from non-resident to resident parents, and by extension, to the state. Single-parent households are more likely to require housing benefit, food bank support and other welfare services when maintenance goes unpaid. For children, the effects include housing insecurity, disrupted education, and poorer mental and physical health outcomes.

There is also a coercive dimension. Increasingly, unpaid maintenance is recognised as a form of economic abuse. Non-resident parents may deliberately withhold payments as a means of exercising control post-separation, particularly so in cases involving a history of domestic abuse. The failure of the CMS to act decisively in these situations can compound harm and leave victims without remedy.

Systemic inaction and the absence of accountability

The flaws of the CMS are by no means new. It has been criticised for inefficiency and lack of enforcement, and even a driver of child poverty. Parliamentary select committees and practitioner groups have all scrutinised the service’s inability to enforce its own orders. Yet reform has been piecemeal and reactive.

One structural problem is the absence of effective oversight. Receiving parents cannot appeal to the family court for enforcement unless they exit the CMS system entirely, a process which itself can take months. Judicial review is procedurally complex and prohibitively expensive.

This lack of recourse reflects a broader systemic complacency. Unlike unpaid spousal maintenance, where the courts retain jurisdiction and can impose penalties, child maintenance is treated as an administrative matter, despite its profound legal, social and economic consequences.

Conclusion: towards an integrated enforcement culture

The current CMS enforcement regime fails both in principle and in practice. Children suffer, primary carers are financially penalised and confidence in the family justice system is eroded. What is needed is a reassessment of enforcement culture. This may include granting the family courts concurrent jurisdiction in serious arrears cases, improving accountability mechanisms within the CMS, and treating regular non-payment as a form of financial abuse within the legal framework.