Child Maintenance Service Anmeldelser 

Rubbish service and simply a legal system, whereby CMS receive more money themselves on the basis of getting as much money out of a paying parent.

Outdated payment calculation method.

Outdated care calculation based on nights allowing the receiving parent to bend the payment amounts to their benefit.

Constant harrasment towards the paying parent.

Constant opening of variations on behalf of the receiving parents suspicions alone.

Complete disregard to the paying parents financial commitments.

These facts are also just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Child Robbery Service.

How a system can be in place in 2025 whereby a parent that is actively contributing financially and responsibility wise in exactly the same context towards the child/children, gets his finances/wealth directly transferred to the receiving parent, whilst having an equal responsibility and financial stability because of the only small difference of overnight care per year.

How is it fair for a receiving parent to be classed the "main" carer if the paying parent has 40% care each year for the children, and has every expense to cover just as the receiving parent does, but on top have to financially support the receiving parent as well on the basis that its not exactly 50/50 and be called the "non main carer", I.e the "paying parent".

40% complete seperate care for the child/children with equal day to day responsibility and care for the child/children, as well as financially but are not a main carer. Pfft my ****.

How is it deemed a "volentary payment" for anything bought for the children outside the CMS when a paying parent with 40% care has to provide everything the children needs on exactly the same level as the receiving parent does.Its not voluntary. Its a requirement.

How is it allowed that the receiving parent does not have to prove where the enormous weekly payment goes, and is allowed to just live off the paying parent indefinitely? Whilst at the same time abusing the system and paying parent, by forcing the paying parent to pick up all of the costs on top because they have an equal responsibility for the children but is "volentary" due to a small difference in overnight stays as the only difference in care and responsibility.

A system whereby bills and taxes are going up seemingly every other day. The paying parent has to deal with this on top of not being able to change their maintenance payments unless income drops by 25% or more!

A system whereby payments are worked out before tax is deducted! How on earth is it fair for someone to be paying maintenance on a figure that is not even the actual income of the paying parent.

A system whereby an equally active, involved and financially providing paying parent is told that child maintenance payments are more important than any other bill or commitment, and if you end up as a result be financially incapable tough luck.

It's sickening that the system in place is pure black and white due to it being too hard work to look at specific childcare arrangements, but can put a huge amount of effort in to making the paying parent pay as much money as possible.

How this system and framework is even accepted by any paying parent is absolutely beyond me. Its just yet another robbery scheme that is set up not by reducing chances of child poverty, but creating divide in co-parenting and ensuring that a receiving parent has a lot more income than a paying parent whilst having the same financial cost to children.

Sends a clear message that having children can be extremely devastating on your finances for decades if the CMS are involved.

It also sends a clear message to receiving parents that the more difficult they make it for overnight stays the more money they will receive unless the paying parent has to spend an obscene amount of money in court to fight back.

People worry about marrying and getting divorce? Having to deal with the CMS till the children turn 20 is far far worse.

Call for the sacking of Peter Schofield the DWP is not fit for purpose it’s all over the place staff training is none existent and no one knows the process even senior management….shocking

Honestly 1 star rating is a given, called today as my mom has been paying every month after cancelling her case, my father has not paid 1 penny since the case started so decided to call CMS to get in contact with him and sort it out, first call the lady on the phone was absolutely lost, she couldn’t put sentence together let alone deal my case, she lied about everything. The Second Lady was the rudest one yet, sounded like an old miserable lady. This service is atrocious, I don’t see why they even take calls. Disgusting customer service! Terrible company! Disgusting staff.

This service let's dad still financial abouse their x partners and their kids .
15 years now ive bewn going thru this compmay they let debt accumialte, they dont contact the dad until the mothers desperate.

You literally let dads get away with not paying for their kids.

Easy to use, fair and clear.
Ex partner opened up a case several years ago and no problems since.

25 mins on hold waiting to talk to someone after randomly receiving a text from them. Another government department going down.

I informed my wife that I would need to pay the CMS payment a few weeks late this month due to needing to pay my mortgage and unforeseen plumbing bills. She has out the bloodsucking CMS onto me within one day and despite me waiting for more than two years to get a response to a complaint they are chasing me hard with threats of sanctions. To them men aren't equal. They're not parents. They're just cash points there to be bled dry. The courts have already given her the house with no mortgage, my car and most of my pension. She has £600,000.... She is not poverty struck having just returned from a third foreign holiday this year.... Why is the CMS so sexist. Why do they not apply some fairness and common sense. I can't go on. I'm going to top myself.

The worst service in the UK, appalling is an understatement

I'd prefer the option of giving 0 stars. Never had a call answered under 35mins. Call handlers providing conflicting information, lying and telling you anything to get you off the phone or they just cut you off when you question something. Those making the decisions rather than ask for more information or clarification just Reject your request forcing Manditory Reconsiderations. Do they get paid on the number of requests being closed?

the worst service to exist.

Totally disorganised, unhelpful, no use of initiative and a total mess.

Although I have provided a court order, stating I have equal shared care with my ex (& the CMS has acknowledged this), they still order that I pay maintenance. I have challenged this decision but am now having to go apply to the tribunal service. I am the one having to upload document after document to prove that we have equal shared care (even though we have a court order in place), I have answered all of the questions about who takes our child to the Doctors, dentists, out of school clubs etc on the phone to the CMS twice. Their systems don't seem to link up the various changes that are "being worked on", so everything is dealt with separately, when it needs to be looked at as a whole case.
Just an absolute mess that urgently needs sorting!
I have wasted so many hours on the phone to the CMS and still nothing has been sorted.

One-Star Review of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS):

“Where Logic Goes to Die”

If you ever wondered what it feels like to live in a Monty Python sketch directed by Franz Kafka, may I introduce you to the Child Maintenance Service.

Let’s start with “accuracy.” CMS has elevated the art of being wrong into a full-time profession. Tell them you’re unemployed? They’ll immediately assume you’re secretly running Goldman Sachs from your garden shed and bill you £5500 a month. Notify them of Child Benefit? They’ll nod politely, bin your letter, and carry on pretending the other parent is still the “main carer” because, well, it’s Tuesday.

Then there’s the “case closure” magic trick. I never asked for my case to be closed—why would I? But CMS, in its infinite wisdom, decided I did. It’s a neat trick: shut the case you fought to open, then pretend it’s your fault. If only Netflix had this level of creative writing.

Transparency? Picture a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat, except the rabbits are arrears you don’t owe, and the hat is on fire. One month my arrears are wiped, the next month they’re back—bigger, bolder, and completely fabricated. Add in a missing £12000 payment they “forgot” to record, and suddenly I’m starring in their own personal Monopoly game where the rules change every roll of the dice.

The complaints system? Imagine writing to Santa Claus, only instead of a present you get a letter three months later telling you Christmas has been cancelled because you didn’t use the correct colour crayon. CMS’s idea of “resolution” is to ignore you long enough that you either give up or start talking to the Independent Case Examiner like they’re your therapist.

Fairness? That’s rich. If you’re a parent paying maintenance, you’re automatically guilty until proven bankrupt. Meanwhile, the other parent could probably move to the Bahamas and CMS would still send them postcards asking how the weather is.

In summary: CMS is a machine that feeds on stress, runs on contradiction, and has weaponised incompetence into policy. If this were a restaurant, you’d order fish and chips, they’d send you an unpaid bill for lobster, and then accuse you of theft because you didn’t eat the chips fast enough.

I would give it -10 if possible a masterclass in theft, robbery and down right evil. This service doesn't help anyone but themselves removing evidence and making up lies. A true entity of Satan. Call handlers and case managers have no empathy compassion or understanding its like they take pleasure in the torture or souls. This service has taken many a life to suicide as they are left with no hope.

One-Star Review of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS): “A Masterclass in Incompetence”

If Kafka had written about child support, the Child Maintenance Service would be his muse.

Let’s begin with the user experience. Imagine calling a customer service line, but instead of help, you get passed around like a hot potato at a team-building retreat. After 40 minutes on hold, you’re finally connected to someone who sounds like they’re either asleep or locked in a cupboard. Just when you’re getting somewhere, you’re told “that’s a different department”, transferred, and dropped into the void—never to return.

Want clarity on your payments? Pfft. CMS’s idea of “transparent” is like looking through a frosted bathroom window at midnight. One month you owe £300, the next it’s £800, and no one—not even their own staff—can explain why. Asking for a breakdown of charges is like requesting MI5’s security briefings. The response? “Computer says no.”

And let’s not forget the classic: “arrears”. CMS seems to calculate these using witchcraft, a dartboard, or the bones of a chicken. You pay on time, in full, via standing order—yet somehow you still owe £52.73 from a month in 2018 when Mercury was in retrograde. Pay it, or they’ll threaten enforcement like you’ve just defaulted on a mortgage for a yacht you didn’t buy.

Their Enforcement Team? Ah yes, a crack unit trained in the ancient art of overreaction. Miss a payment by a day and suddenly your wages are raided, your credit rating is trashed, and your bank thinks you’re laundering money for Pablo Escobar. Meanwhile, actual non-payers vanish into the mist like rogue wizards, unbothered and untouched.

Fairness? Not a chance. CMS operates under the belief that every paying parent is a champagne-sipping villain trying to dodge responsibility. Ask for a reassessment and you’re treated like you’re trying to scam your way out of buying your kid a sandwich.

And communication? They send letters that arrive after the deadline they gave you to respond. It’s like playing a game of chess with someone who moves your pieces while you’re asleep and then fines you for losing.

In short: if the CMS were a restaurant, you’d order a sandwich, wait 12 weeks, get charged for three steaks, and then be fined for not eating fast enough.

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Final Verdict:

⭐️ 1 star, only because zero isn’t an option.

Perfect for those who enjoy bureaucracy, confusion, and feeling like a criminal for supporting their child. Avoid if you value logic, fairness, or having a shred of sanity left.

It needs to be abolished, rebuilt fairly.

Multiple times asked for detailed breakdown of my false arrears but nothing and when you do speak with them they don't seem bothered about you just about getting money even if it's incorrect

Unjust system, when you report the other parent for giving false information and offer them a way to investigate, they’re not bothered. Always side with the mums. A fraudulent government department that needs serious overhauling.

Absolutely appalling, unjust system, that punishes and treats the non-custodial parent as a criminal, with no consideration of the history between the parents and money assets already handed over. Furthermore, the money is not monitored or proven to be going on the children (rather, in this case, on the horses).
Father is paying a fortune each month (to a woman who left him for another man and took the children with her), because of this, he is forced to work overtime to make ends meet. Woman then gets a portion of his overtime as well the following year. Absolute immoral behaviour by the mother and outrageous rules by the CMS.
The whole CM system needs a government review!!

Disgusting company killing off good people!

Absolutely disgusting service I’ve always paid child maintenance never moaned or argued any payment and always paid on time then my son decided to move in with me full time I sent all the information to child maintenance and evidence and twice it has been rejected and been told it’s now got to go through a tribunal and I’ve still got to pay money even though my son lives with me and all I kept getting was it’s legislation

An absolute bunch of incompetents.

I left my ex due to her controlling behaviour, including financially controlling behaviour. That is now actually a crime.

And now the CMS are happy to let themselves be used to facilitate her controlling behaviour by proxy.

In 14 years I have always paid to the penny that which I am supposed to, and have always paid exactly on time. Not one single time have I failed to do so.

I am now retired early for health reasons (I suffered a stroke) and am on a small occupational pension. Divide my pension up over a nominal 35 hour working week and my income is about 2/3 of minimum wage, so I'm not exactly flush. Nevertheless, I still pay exactly as per CMS's formula.

My ex regularly phones CMS making spurious and obviously false claims about my income, most recently that I am secretly working and earning £70k - not bad for an ill health retiree that only leaves the house once or twice a week when my adult daughter can take me out.

These are obviously false claims, and can be easily dismissed if CMS were to just check with HMRC. But no, three or four times a year she makes these ridiculous claims as a means to harass or exert control over me and I have to faff about providing pension payslips etc each time, then endure the stress of waiting 5 or 6 weeks while they drag their heels closing the complaint.

On one occasion she told them I had another house and was earning undeclared rental income and CMS asked me to prove I didn't own another house. How is someone supposed to prove something in the negative? It took time and expense of a solicitor to get that one closed down.

There is clearly a pattern of frivolous and malicious behaviour on her part, but CMS blindly follow though every time and do her bidding in hassling me.

It gets better. We've been divorced 14 years (and remember I mentioned her financially controlling behaviour?) CMS take it upon themselves to inform her what my income is to the penny, so I have no privacy (breach of Article 8 ECHR) and when asked what legislation allows them to disclose my sensitive personal data (a breach of GDPR) they decline to answer. I mentioned this in passing while on a call to HMRC and they were genuinely aghast that CMS do this. I would challenge this but dont have the money to pay for solicitors just to uphold a point of principle.

Meanwhile, every minute spent hassling me, a scrupulous rigorous paying parent, is a minute less capacity they have to chase up non paying parents.

The CMS is not fit for purpose at either end. On the one hand non or underpaying parents seem to behave with impunity, while CMS permit themselves to to be manipulated into harassing honest paying parents. They're ineffective and institutionally willing to facilitate harassment on behalf of disgruntled parents with a grudge - abolish the organisation, sack the lot of them and start afresh, or else dont bother at all.