Parents are charged a fee when the CMS steps in because the other parent stopped paying

The Child Maintenance Service operates two payment routes. On Direct Pay the CMS calculates the amount owed and the parents arrange the transfer between themselves, at no cost to either. On Collect and Pay the CMS collects the money from the paying parent and passes it on, and cases usually move onto that route for one reason, which is that the payments stopped.

Who ends up paying for the failure

Collect and Pay carries charges on both sides. The paying parent is charged a percentage on top of what they owe. The receiving parent has a percentage deducted from the maintenance they receive.

So the parent who was not being paid, and who did nothing except find themselves on the receiving end of somebody else’s decision to stop, takes a reduction in money intended for their child as the price of the state stepping in to enforce the arrangement.

What the fee is supposed to buy

A collection fee is defensible if what it funds is effective collection. The CMS holds substantial statutory powers, including deduction from earnings orders, deduction orders against bank accounts, liability orders obtained through the magistrates’ court, and applications to disqualify a paying parent from driving or to commit them to prison.

In practice those powers are used slowly and comparatively rarely, and they work considerably better against a PAYE employee than against a parent who is self-employed, paid in dividends, or working through a company they control. Parliamentary debate on the service has returned to this gap repeatedly. A parent whose former partner is on a payroll can expect a deduction from earnings order. A parent whose former partner runs their own company can expect a case note.

Where complaints actually go

The route runs through the CMS complaints process first, then a mandatory reconsideration if you are disputing a decision, and then to the Independent Case Examiner, who must receive your complaint within six months of the CMS issuing its final response, with a copy of that response enclosed.

The ICE was established in 1997 to review complaints about the Child Support Agency. Nearly thirty years later it is still reviewing complaints about its successor organisation. Crucially, it can examine service failures such as delay, error and poor handling, but not matters of law or government policy. If your complaint is that the rules themselves produce an unjust result, there is no body that will hear it.

Practical points

Get every calculation in writing, including the gross income figure used and the tax year it was drawn from. If arrears appear on your account without explanation, request a full transaction history, which you are entitled to receive. Keep your own dated ledger of payments made or received, because in disputes it is frequently the only reliable record either parent has. And diarise the six-month ICE deadline on the day the final response letter arrives, because missing it closes the route entirely.