It's already abysmally easy to dodge child support – but even more so if you're in the military

Of the countless hurdles single parents face, among the most exasperating is the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), the government’s system to enable separated parents to pay their child’s living costs.

From administrative errors to endless waiting times, easy-to-exploit loopholes to lack of enforcement, the CMS, run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), is renowned for driving single parents to desperation; some have even told me it has left them feeling suicidal. Perhaps worst of all, the shambolic setup allows abusers to continue economically manipulating their former partners and children.

Unpaid CMS payment already leads thousands of families into debt and poverty each year. It’s not hard to imagine what this broken system looks like now. Without informing parents, the CMS recently changed its policy to make verbal (rather than documentary) evidence of loss of income sufficient for CMS to be decreased, or even terminated. There has never been an easier time to play the system; nor a harder time to chase.

One of those parents chasing payment is Lucy. The father of Lucy’s child is in the armed forces, which makes things even harder. This is because the MoD has a “memorandum of understanding” with the CMS, which allows the MoD to cap maintenance payments at a very low rate. It also enables the MoD to delay payment if personnel are in an “operational zone”, and to deny any CMS payment order if personnel are reservists or discharged.

Lucy’s ex-partner has a history of abuse. There was emotional abuse from the beginning of their relationship. After she left him, he was convicted of assault against his second wife. Despite this conviction, he received a court order allowing regular access to their child. Now, it appears, he is abusing Lucy through the CMS.

After a lengthy two-year battle for payment, Lucy has just learned that the military is withholding payment, but won’t tell her why. Her ex-partner doesn’t satisfy any of the criteria for a denial or delay in payment, to her knowledge. Infuriatingly, the CMS has informed her that the armed forces have explained the circumstances to them, but that these details cannot be passed on to her for GDPR reasons.

“I feel let down by everyone,” she says. “They are giving him oxygen, they enable him,” she says of the MoD. Lucy tells me that when she and her ex-partner went to the family courts, he repeatedly stressed his membership of the armed forces as proof of his decency. “I am disgusted with the military,” Lucy says “which has not only supported him despite violent criminal convictions, but which is now supporting him to evade child maintenance.”

Correspondence with Lucy has been nothing short of heartbreaking. She is painstakingly thorough. She sent me lengthy, precise emails detailing her situation. She has kept records of court documents, of the numerous complaints she’s made. The sheer work she has had to do to try and make government – the DWP, the family courts, the MoD – listen to her is staggering. But still, nobody is listening. “If it were predominantly women paying maintenance,” she wrote to me, “the enforcement would be much stricter than it is.”

Lucy’s case leaves a litany of questions unanswered, though two above all: why are violent men allowed to remain in the armed forces? And why does being in the military exempt you from paying child support?

The armed forces special deal with the CMS is potentially a very large loophole for individuals to exploit, and particularly at a time when single parents are even more vulnerable than usual. Our government must close it.

An MoD spokesperson said: “While we cannot discuss the details of individual cases. The MoD is abiding by the agreement we have in place with the Child Maintenance Service.” Lucy is a pseudonym.