Absent parents forced to pay children £180m

CHILD support investigators have clawed back £180million in a major crackdown on parents who dodge family maintenance bills.

They have secured a 24 per cent rise in the annual amount seized from fathers and mothers who refuse to meet their parental responsibilities.

The Child Maintenance Service teams hit reluctant payers with tough new powers including the right to seize passports and access business accounts.

Lords Pensions Minister Baroness Stedman-Scott said the Government is determined to tackle parents who take “clothes from the backs of your own children”.

Baroness Stedman-Scott said families suffer intolerable stress when one of the parents denies the other their upkeep.

One father was ordered to pay more than £10,000 for his two young children after spending three years trying to outwit authorities. A senior CMS investigator said: “Our focus is to get maintenance payments flowing to help families and children who need it. We aim to work with parents to help them to agree payments that work for them and are affordable. But where some parents persist in avoiding their maintenance responsibilities, we use the powers available to us to enforce payment.”

The new powers came into force in December following complaints that thousands of dodgers were ignoring their responsibilities. Officials can now look at financial assets such as property and any unearned income, including inheritance, rental and interest. The extra measures came on top of existing powers such as removing the offenders’ driving licences and imprisoning persistent non-payers.

The CMS also increased the number of liability orders – court rulings which legally recognise unpaid maintenance – by 55 per cent year on year.

They secured 9,800 orders in the year to March, compared to 6,300 over the previous 12 months. CMS sources said the £10,000 case involved a 33-year-old man who was self-employed with children aged eight and 10. Officials said that despite having avoided paying maintenance since 2016, he had been making payments toward a planned holiday abroad.

With a court summons and the threat of having his passport confiscated, the absent dad paid all money owed and now makes regular payments for both children.