The Austin Lafferty Solicitors & Estate Agents Blog

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Agency has revealed the scale of the cost of administering some Child Support Agency (CSA) cases. A typical case requiring a variety of actions to ensure the payment of maintenance can cost up to around £25,000 over 18 years.

Internal management estimates show that when the case involves legal action, the cost to the public purse can jump significantly - by as much as 50%. A ‘difficult’ case in the North West involving years of enforcement against a determinedly resistant parent cost the taxpayer around £40,000.

The wealthy businessman had avoided paying regular child maintenance for his two sons for more than 16 years. During a marathon legal battle the Agency was forced to deploy nearly all of the legal enforcement tools available to it including liability orders, third party debt orders and a charging order imposed on his home. In the end an order for the sale of the property finally compelled him to make a payment of £70,000.

None of the estimated costs in these examples include the added burden of the CSA’s inefficient computer systems, which are due to be replaced over the next few years.

The Child Support Agency has forcibly deducted a record sum of money from a father's bank account in order to settle 16 years worth of child maintenance he failed to pay for his daughter.

Using powers requiring banks to open up the accounts of indebted parents, investigators found enough money in a single deposit account to repay his entire debt of £108,000. The amount was frozen to allow the man time to appeal and later seized.

In another case a mother from London, whose ex-partner refused to pay for his child for eight years, has received more than £20,000 taken from his bank account via a lump sum deduction order.

With an estimated £3.7 billion owed in unpaid child maintenance, Ministers have signalled their determination to crack down on irresponsible parents who fail to support their children.

Work and Pensions Minister, Maria Miller, said:

“We are also fundamentally reforming the child maintenance system. The flawed rules under which the CSA operates give parents no incentive to pay up on time, still less collaborate with their child's other parent to make sure their children are properly supported.”

The current Child Support Agency scheme is set to close to new customers from next year. A new child maintenance service will be launched in the biggest overhaul of the system since it was first set up in 1993.