Child Maintenance Service Reviews 1,280

Absolutely disgusting. Do not take all facts into consideration.

Just received my yearly letter from these jackasses.

It’s really quite amusing that these inept morons are still saying Ive underpaid my weekly commitment even though my bank statements clearly show I’ve never missed a payment nor underpaid by any amount, yet they still state I’ve underpaid but this time it’s by a completely different amount… even more amusing that it’s a lower amount than they stated last year…

In fact I’ve actually been overpaying for the past year because the eldest is now nearly nineteen and in full time work…

Please please please make an issue of this and I’ll see your inept corrupt lazy bum’s in court where I’m sure they will just love to see my bank account payments and your continuing arse hat behaviour!

Simply not fit for purpose. I divorced about 15 years ago and even though my 2 kids lived 50% with me I had to pay to my ex but never received any payment from her. 3 years ago my youngest, who is now 18 and in 6th form, moved in with me 100%. I made a claim but have not received even a single penny. The CMS say they're working on it but I doubt I'll ever see any payment. Considering they have the power to deduct from your salary and even bank accout their only excuse can be they only harrass men. They took me to court 3 times and each time the judge threw it out.

Useless! Should be renamed Criminal Mismanagement System. They do not care about children's welfare. They do not care about the stress and friction they create between parents. They do not care about anything parents might be dealing with. It's a corrupt, antiquated system that doesn't work. WE NEED CHANGE!!!!!!

I wish we could give NO stars. I feel I have to review what is a disgraceful, incompetent, uncompassionate service, which was put in place to help children with errant fathers. My step son isn't such a father, he pays to maintain his son, but is part of what appears to be a profiteering corrupt service. He has been paying by deduction of earnings but as his company has changed hands, (his job remains the same), he has now been told to pay by standing order for 6 months, at a cost which goes to CMS. My step son quoted the law which stipulates that the payer can opt for deduction of earnings, but all he has got back is notification that because the HMRC have said no, they can do no more. We have worked out that the CMS actually owe my step son £2500 for erroneous information in their useless system. I have personally heard his call to the operator and all she could say is "sorry" sorry doesn't cut it when my step son (who has battled with mental health problems), is near to exhaustion due to the stress of this government department's profiteering. We aren't convinced that the money he pays goes towards my grandson's upkeep. I would like for someone to put in place that the payee needs to show proof of where the money is going. One government department just DOESNT speak to the other and in the middle are good dads and mums who are being shafted, sometimes towards being suicidal. This HAS to stop. We are in the process of contacting the ombudsman on Form SSCS2. These people HAVE to be taken to task. My stepson loves and supports his son but he also has bills to pay and the stress is, literally, killing him

A four minute automated voice message that you can't skip, and which repeatedly asks you to use the online service web chat. There is no online web chat. Finally, you are asked for identification details via another automated service, then cut off after 5 minutes without even getting to speak to a human. And then, after a further 25 minutes of waiting, the person at the other end is hopeless.

A Paying Parent's Account of Life Inside the CMS Machine
Nobody tells you, when the Child Maintenance Service first makes contact, that you are entering a system capable of dismantling a person completely. Not just financially. Not just legally. Psychologically. Existentially. There are paying parents, men and women, who have not survived their experience of the CMS. That is not rhetoric. That is a fact that has been raised in Parliament, documented by charities, and left largely unaddressed by the government that runs this agency.
To understand how a bureaucratic service pushes people toward suicide, you have to understand the particular cruelty of what it does and how it does it.
It begins with the calculations. As a paying parent, you are assessed on income figures that are frequently wrong, outdated, or stripped of legitimate context, pension contributions, unavoidable deductions, periods of reduced earnings. When you challenge these figures, you are met not with engagement but with process: referrals, timescales, holding letters, and eventually a decision that often simply restates the original error. You are not heard. You are processed.
Then comes enforcement. A Deduction of Earnings Order can be applied to your wages without warning, taking amounts that bear no relationship to what has been agreed or assessed, leaving you unable to meet your own basic costs of living. Rent, food, utilities, all become precarious overnight. And when you raise this, when you explain that you cannot survive on what remains, the answer is more process. More waiting. More silence.
Simultaneously, you are expected to maintain your relationship with your children, the entire stated purpose of the system, while being financially gutted by it. Many paying parents describe the particular anguish of wanting desperately to be present for their children, to pay fairly and willingly, while being treated by the state as a debtor to be pursued rather than a parent to be supported. The system does not distinguish between the absent, wilfully evasive non-payer and the engaged, struggling parent trying to do right. Both are processed identically.
For those who also face false or exaggerated claims, or who watch the system being weaponised by a former partner to extend conflict, the psychological damage compounds rapidly. You begin to feel that the state has decided, institutionally, that you do not matter. That your distress is irrelevant. That your children's relationship with you is not a priority, only the extraction of money is. And when a person feels simultaneously financially destroyed, institutionally invisible, and separated from their children, the conditions for a mental health crisis are not just present, they are manufactured.
This is not speculation. The charities and others have documented repeated instances of paying parents in acute psychological crisis directly attributed to CMS related pressure. Parliamentary questions have been raised. Ministers have offered sympathy and little else. The system continues unchanged.
What is required is not compassion as an afterthought. It is structural reform: an independent appeals mechanism with real teeth, mandatory safeguarding checks for the mental health of both parties, an end to the punishing fees that make "Collect and Pay" an instrument of financial ruin, and a fundamental cultural shift within the CMS that recognises paying parents as human beings with rights, not simply revenue streams.
Until that happens, the CMS will continue to be an agency that, for some of the most vulnerable people it touches, does not merely fail, it destroys.

Just been told that the arrears that I was told to pay last December at the end of my maintenance of £50.50 which i pay at £5.05 a month direct pay to my ex is now £78.35 and there coming after it regardless. How do can I pay if CMS are just making numbers up without asking me if I have prof of payments and they just put the phone down on me and ended the call without giving me a valid reason

CMS are just stealing money

Iv reported a change of income 21 weeks ago (long term is 12 weeks or more) while waiting for a back operation before i can rethrn to work. 4 times i have uploaded my pay slips proving my income. HMRC have given them information about my income which is on my profile. Each time they have rejected the fact my income has changed and when asking why they said a computer makes a decision automatically and they cant understand why the computer isnt recognising the information they have. For 3 weeks iv been told twice the 'case manager' will call me.. ill at this rate ill be dead before they do. Iv been left with next to nothing to live off or provide for my 2 other children because a computer does their job for them. Theyre a disgrace.

Even when your complaint is accepted by an Independent Case Examiner (ICE), this is in response to a request for an update on timescales made on 29th March 2026…..

Dear Mr xxx,

Thank you for your email. Your case is currently in a queue awaiting allocation to an Investigator.

Cases are allocated to investigators in order of the date they are received at this office, this ensures fairness to all complainants.

Your case was received by our office in November 2025. We are currently allocating cases to investigators that we received in August 2025.

It is difficult to say when your case will be allocated as this will be dependent upon the complexities of the cases investigated ahead of yours.

We appreciate your patience whilst it is awaiting allocation.

Kind regards
Independent Case Examiner’s Office

Corrupt system designed to extort money.

People have committed suicide as a direct result of CMS accusations and loading accounts with false arrears.

Despite winning an Independent Case Examiners review they refused to remove the arrears.

They had to pay me £250 in compensation which I eventually got from them.

Corrupt, terrible communication and controlling company to extort money. Needs dismantling and holding to account.

All i can say about this service is disappointing,all they are bothered about is getting money for the person claiming,if you ring them and finally get through which takes ages they tell you to go online,so waste of time,and finally done with this thank goodness feel for people who are having them chase you!

CMS appear to be prejudiced and take lies as facts without any validation or checking.

Have been both the receiving parent and the paying parent and in both situations the rules just didn't apply to the other parent, and I was left with threats and difficulties and expectations that I couldn't meet - when you complain CMS hides behind "time" (min 45mins hold time per phone call??!!) of process, and then breaks their own process.

Have successfully taken CMS to court tribunal three times, now onto my fourth time with HMCTS.

The number of "administrative" errors are incredible - as others have said this government "service" is serving the very people it purports to not.

As a receiving parent with refusal from the paying parent, CMS pretend to go get it, but in practice do nothing. The 25% charge for paying and 5% charge for receiving is appalling waste of a child's benefit.

As a paying parent, when you say you cannot afford the payments, they guide you to online support advice (meaingless and pointless box-ticking), rather than have a reasonable grown up conversation about paying what you can afford - a PAYE income doesn't mean it's available to send to the receiving parent.

It's broke

they ruin your relationship with your kids never listen to the man side my ex Anna is on benefits don't work wants money for her life I was feeding my 18 year old daughter 3/4 days a week she didn't want to stay with me as she not a kid had to stop as I could afford it after 109 pound a week was taken out and couldn't afford my bills while she lived it up really when I refused wot happens threatened with court and passport taken off me and driving licence sort your shit out so unfair

Unfortunately I have to score 1 as zero not option. The child maintenance service is abhorrent. This vile government department is unlawful and corrupt to the core. These scum bags are renowned for inventing arrears on cases When challenged on this they are unable to provide any evidence. However they then place individuals on collect an attachment of earnings. They have caused thousands of fathers to commit suicide and forced into homelessness due to the above. Cause parental alienation. This abhorrent service needs to be dismantled forthwith

I have 2 children full time alone. I also have 2 that don’t live with me. The situations are identical, but the treatment of me as man compared to me as a full time single parent, a quiet frankly disgusting and financially abusive. Changing shared care when you’ve been advised there are no changes and there’s no proof of any changes is shocking. You adsive me as a parent that concent from both parties or proof such as documentation is required. But as a man you’ve done this anyway with no concent and no proof and I’ve even assured you there no conversations about changes. Shocking being on both side and having a clear experience of these alarm double standards. Guess I’m left to move a priory dept to UC to block it. 🤦‍♂️☠️

Yet another system not fit for purpose. Had a case with them for roughly 20 years. Owed thousands in arrears, nothing appears to be done about chasing the non resident parent for payments. All these things they say they can implement on the non resident parent if they don't pay never happen. My son is now grown up and has kids of his own but I'm still waiting for someone to chase up the vast arrears I'm owed. Also not heard anything on any kind of progress for months. Least the pointless letters have stopped, could have wallpapered my house with them numerous times with the amount I've had over the years all amounting to nothing.
I'll probably die still waiting for a penny. Absolute joke. This system could learn alot from how it's done in Germany!

Theses are meant to be hear for both parents, load of rubbish gladly took over £140 from my universal credit by accident, but been trying for over a year to get in back and keep getting past from pillow to post.

Very disappointed with a government service waiting time on hold can take up to about 1 hour to 2 hours bad experience with customer service teams in past can’t explain how the amounts are broken down when you ask found there is no help when you need support and help overall a very disappointing experience would advice any one that is not involved not to get involved caused more problems than good also found lots of harassing mail from them

I have repeatedly provided all required documents, including my end-of-year tax return, and completed every form as requested. Despite this, the Child Maintenance Service continues to make repeated mistakes, resulting in ever-increasing bills. The persistent errors suggest a systemic issue that needs urgent resolution. On top of this, I am told not to pay directly but to follow their unclear payment system. This level of service is unacceptable and needs immediate attention.They don’t do their job properly.