Last week we looked at how separating parents can sort out maintenance arrangements for their children.
Often, however, the maintenance is not paid. The Department for Work and Pensions state that around 10,000 parents a year wilfully refuse to pay child maintenance. In such cases enforcement action has to be taken against the paying parent.
But enforcement can take a long time, leaving the receiving parent struggling for money.
A new system is now to be introduced that should make the enforcement process considerably quicker.
When child maintenance is not paid the Child Maintenance Service (‘CMS’) will try to recover the arrears by a Deduction from Earnings Order, which will take an amount towards the arrears from the paying parent’s earnings, or by making deductions from the paying parent’s bank account.
However, these methods of enforcement are not always successful, or even possible, such as where the paying parent is self-employed.
In such a case the CMS can use other methods of enforcement, such as asking a bailiff to seize goods from the paying parent to cover the arrears, taking away the paying parent’s driving licence, or even having them sent to prison.
But these other methods can only be used after a liability order has been made against the paying parent.
Until now a liability order had to be made by a Magistrates’ Court, a process that could take nearly six months.
To reduce that time the government is introducing a new system of ‘administrative liability orders’, which can be made by the CMS itself, rather than the court.
It is expected that administrative liability orders will be made in as little as six to eight weeks.
The paying parent will be given 7 days’ notice of the CMS’s intention to make an administrative liability order. Where the paying parent pays the whole amount of the arrears within the 7 day period, the administrative liability order will not come into force.
The administrative liability order will be discharged where the maintenance calculation on which the order is based (the amount of arrears) has changed since the order was made.
The paying parent will be able to appeal to a court against the decision to make the administrative liability order, within 21 days from the date that the order is made.
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