Over one-third of single mothers in debt: Research

LONDON: More than a third of single mothers are in debt because their former partner has failed to pay child maintenance, new research has found.

A quarter of the women surveyed say they do not receive any regular inancial help from their child’s father – forcing them to shoulder the cost of raising their child alone.

New research by Slater and Gordon – a UK law irm who specialise in family law – found 11 per cent say they have been forced to depend on food banks to feed their children when their ex-partner has refused to help them inancially.

Mothers were found to be struggling to cover their basic living costs when parents break up – with 39 per cent being forced to take out loans or rely on their overdrafts to make ends meet.

There are estimated to be a total of around 1.6 million lone mothers with dependent children in the UK.

Half of mothers said their ex-partner’s contribution is not enough to pay the bills – meaning they are short of on average £3,264 a year.

Some 88 per cent say their unstable inancial situation means they are anxious about being made homeless due to struggling to ind enough money to cover rent or monthly mortgage payments.

Hannah Cornish, a family law lawyer from Slater and Gordon who gives advice on child maintenance issues, said: “Fathers not paying out obviously makes mothers feel very angry. It is genuinely upsetting. If someone is not paying then it’s the child that suffers. It can mean there is not enough money for activities like after-schools clubs or school trips. There is not enough money for just life generally.

“People do not pay for a number of reasons. Some people can’t afford it, some people rightly or wrongly think they should not have to pay. If the relationship breakdown has been particularly challenging, there can be a lot of bad blood.”

Over a third of women surveyed in the research said they were dependant on handouts from their own parents to survive from month to month.

Nearly half of them said their ex currently owed them money, with 37 per cent owing more than £1,000 and two thirds saying their ex had power and control over them due to the fact they are financially dependent on them.

Researchers asked 1,000 mothers who had primary custody of children questions about the formality of their inancial arrangements with their child’s father. They used a sample representative of society.