Child Support Issue Rages in the United Kingdom as Single Parents Decry Child Maintence Services' Failures

In the United Kingdom, the issue of child support remains a hot issue of debate. Just this Father's Day, a group calling itself Fathers4Justice held a protest demanding that fathers stop supporting the Child Maintenance Service (which replaced the old Child Support Agency). This, however, has earned the scorn of observers who point out that a shockingly large percentage of fathers actually fail to provide for their children after their divorce from the children's mothers.

The CMS is the agency former partners or spouses can refer to when they cannot agree to a family-based arrangement. According to the CMS website, a family-based arrangement "is a private way to sort out child maintenance. Parents arrange everything themselves and no-one else has to be involved." Among the services it provides are finding the other parent if and when they have not given child support; sort out disagreements about parentage; work out how much child maintenance should be paid; and arrange for the 'paying' parent to pay child maintenance - the parent who doesn't have main day-to-day care of the child; as well as pass payments on to the 'receiving' parent - the parent who has main day-to-day care of the child.

According to reports, however, the agency has more or less failed its service mandate to help single parents - most particularly single mothers - secure child support from their estranged partners.

As one single mother complained, the CMS suggests that they - the mothers -- make their own private arrangements with the fathers, and this is essentially the message in the letters of response the SMS sends out to complaining mothers. No such advice is given to fathers, and it appears that not much effort is being made to force absent fathers to shoulder their support responsibilities,

A natural charity for single parents, Gingerbread, has even released a report charging the CSA's "disastrous record" in collecting unpaid child maintenance. It argued that half of the fathers in the system owe maintenance, and some 90,000 have not paid at all in the last three months. It pointed out that the CSA almost £52 million in arrears, despite a system of financial incentives and fines which were intended to prevent this occurring. It charged that close to half of all parents involved with the CMS are now owed money by the non-resident parent.