Child Maintenance UK: What to Do If a Parent Won’t Pay

I still remember the exact moment the standing order didn’t show up. It was a Friday, I’d already done the school shoe shopping in my head, and then… nothing landed in the account. I genuinely thought it was a bank glitch at first. It wasn’t. It was the start of about eight months of chasing, ringing the CMS, getting fobbed off, and slowly learning a system that, honestly, nobody explains properly until you’re already knee-deep in it.

If you’re reading this because the maintenance has dried up and you’re staring at a gap in your budget that wasn’t there last month, I get it. This isn’t a dry legal explainer. It’s the actual process, the bits that work, the bits that take forever, and the mistakes I made along the way that you don’t have to repeat.

First, Don’t Panic — But Don’t Sit On It Either

The instinct when a payment doesn’t show up is to wait a week and see if it sorts itself out. Sometimes it does — a payday clash, a bank holiday, whatever. But if it’s been more than a week or two, or this is the second time it’s happened, that’s your cue to start the paper trail. The Child Maintenance Service genuinely does move faster the earlier you flag it, and waiting three months “to be sure” just means three months of arrears you now have to claw back.

Step 1: Try Talking First (If It’s Safe To)

I know, I know — if talking worked, you wouldn’t be reading this. But it’s worth one last go if you’re still on speaking terms and there’s no history of intimidation or abuse. Sometimes a parent genuinely has lost a job or is going through something, and a short-term catch-up plan is quicker than months of admin.

Things that actually helped when I tried this:

• Putting the conversation in writing (text or email), even if you also spoke on the phone — it matters later if you do end up at the CMS.
• Suggesting a realistic repayment plan rather than demanding everything back at once.
• Using a mediator if direct conversation always turns into an argument.

If they’re dodging calls, making excuses every single month, or you suspect they’re hiding income — stop wasting your energy here and move to the official route.

Step 2: Get the CMS Involved Properly

If you’re not already with the Child Maintenance Service, open a case. If you were on a “Direct Pay” arrangement (the one where CMS just calculates the amount and you sort payments between yourselves) and it’s broken down, you need to actively tell them and ask to move to “Collect & Pay.” They won’t automatically switch you over just because a payment’s late — you have to report it.

Here’s the bit people don’t realise until they’re in it: under Collect & Pay, paying parents are charged a 20% fee on top of every payment collected, while receiving parents lose 4% of what they’re due each time a payment is passed on to them. So if maintenance is set at £100 a week, the paying parent actually has to send £120, and you’d receive £96 of it. It feels a bit galling to lose that 4% when you didn’t cause the problem — I felt the same — but there are currently no exemptions from these collection fees, even though there’s been ongoing discussion in Parliament about that, particularly for domestic abuse cases. Worth knowing: the government has signalled that fees may drop to 2% for everyone from 2027–28, but that’s not law yet, so don’t bank on it changing your situation right now.

The upside of being on Collect & Pay is real, though — once CMS is collecting directly, they have eyes on every payment. If payments are missed under Collect & Pay, the CMS will act on it themselves — you don’t have to keep reporting it every single time, which was honestly a relief after months of feeling like I was the one doing all the chasing.

Step 3: What the CMS Can Actually Do (Without Going to Court)

This is the part that genuinely surprised me — how much power they have before a court is even involved. These are called collection or administrative powers:

• Deduction from Earnings Order — CMS contacts the employer directly and the maintenance comes out of wages before your ex even sees it. In the most recent published figures, around 56,600 paying parents were on a deduction from earnings order or request, with 85% of them compliant — so it does actually work for most people once it’s set up.
• Deduction from bank accounts — CMS can order a bank to take a lump sum or regular amounts straight from an account. In one recent quarter, around 5,100 of these deduction orders were in process, collecting £4.1 million.
• Taking it from benefits — if the paying parent is on certain benefits, a flat rate gets deducted automatically.

What nobody tells you is the timeline. In my experience and from what others have said in parent forums, it’s not instant — there’s a warning period first, and only after repeated non-payment does the heavier stuff kick in.

Step 4: When It Goes to Court

If none of the above works, the CMS can apply to a Magistrates’ Court for a liability order, and from there things get serious for the non-paying parent:

• Bailiffs sent to seize goods worth the value of the debt.
• Driving licence suspension — for up to two years.
• Passport confiscation — stopping them travelling abroad.
• Prison — in cases of proven “wilful refusal,” up to six weeks.

Realistically, though, these are rare. In one recent quarter across England and Wales there were 140 prison sentences, one passport confiscation, and two driving licence disqualifications tied to unpaid maintenance — out of the hundreds of thousands of cases running through the system. So don’t expect the prison threat to be the thing that fixes it; the earnings and bank deductions are doing most of the heavy lifting day to day.

Mistakes I Made (So You Don’t Have To)

• I waited too long to report the first missed payment, thinking it’d resolve itself. It didn’t, and that delay meant a bigger pile of arrears to chase later.
• I didn’t keep a proper record of every missed or late payment in the early days. Once I started a simple spreadsheet with dates and amounts, the CMS calls got so much easier — they want specifics, not “it’s been a few months.”
• I assumed not paying meant I could restrict contact. I genuinely thought about this in a low moment, and I’m glad I didn’t act on it. Maintenance and contact are legally separate things in the UK — withholding access because of unpaid money can actually damage your own standing if there’s ever a Children Act dispute about arrangements.
• I underestimated how long enforcement can take. Knowing the powers exist is one thing; watching them grind through the system in real time takes patience.

Common Mistakes Other Parents Tell Me They’ve Made

• Accepting cash “off the books” instead of going through CMS, then having no record when it stops.
• Not asking for a variation when they strongly suspected the other parent was self-employed and underreporting income.
• Assuming the debt has a time limit and giving up chasing it — it doesn’t expire, ever.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the maximum sentence for not paying child support?

In the UK, a parent found to have “wilfully refused” to pay, after the case has gone through the Magistrates’ Court, can be sentenced to up to six weeks in prison. In practice this is a last resort and used sparingly — the courts and CMS generally exhaust deduction orders, bank account seizures, and licence/passport restrictions first.

What happens when one parent refuses to co-parent?

This is a separate legal issue from maintenance, and it’s dealt with through the family courts rather than the CMS. If a parent is refusing contact or won’t engage in arrangements for the child, the other parent can apply for a Child Arrangements Order through the family court. It’s worth remembering that withholding maintenance and refusing contact are two different problems with two different solutions — mixing them up (e.g., blocking contact because maintenance hasn’t been paid) can backfire legally.

What happens if you can’t afford maintenance?

If your circumstances have genuinely changed — you’ve lost your job, had a drop in income, or new caring responsibilities — you can ask the CMS for a recalculation rather than simply stopping payments. Going quiet and not paying is treated very differently to flagging a change in circumstances early. If you’re struggling, contact the CMS as soon as possible; they can adjust ongoing payments based on updated income, though arrears already built up still need to be addressed.

What happens if a father doesn’t pay child maintenance?

The same process applies regardless of which parent owes the money: the case can move to Collect & Pay, deduction orders can be applied to wages or bank accounts, and if those fail, court action can follow with penalties up to and including prison in extreme cases.

Can maintenance arrears be claimed even years later?

Yes. There’s no time limit on the CMS pursuing unpaid maintenance, even once the child has grown up. Across the life of the CMS scheme, hundreds of millions of pounds in arrears have built up nationally, so you’re far from the only one dealing with this — and it’s still recoverable no matter how long it’s been.

What if the other parent has moved abroad?

The UK has reciprocal enforcement agreements (often referred to as REMO) with a large number of countries, which allow UK maintenance arrangements to be enforced even if the paying parent has relocated overseas, including to common destinations like the US, Australia, and most of Europe.

Final Thoughts

If there’s one thing I’d want another parent in this position to take away, it’s this: the system is slow, sometimes frustratingly so, but it isn’t toothless. The deduction orders genuinely do work for the majority of cases once they’re set up — it’s the waiting to get there that tests your patience. Keep records, report missed payments the moment they happen rather than weeks later, and don’t let the threat of court action distract you from the more boring but far more common tool that actually gets money moving: straight deductions from wages or bank accounts.

And try, as much as you can, to keep the maintenance fight separate from everything else around your child. It’s tempting to let the financial frustration spill into the access arrangements, but the two are judged completely differently in the eyes of the law — and your child benefits most when you keep them that way too.

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This article is based on personal experience and publicly available information and is intended for general guidance only. It isn’t a substitute for legal advice. For your specific situation, contact the Child Maintenance Service directly via GOV.UK or speak to a family law solicitor.