Guidance

Child Support Agency: information for parents with historical debt

Published 14 December 2018

Summary

This guidance is for receiving parents (the parent who has the main day-to-day care of the child) and explains how Child Support Agency (CSA) historical debt still owed to you and the government will be collected or written off.

A strategy on how the government will handle debt built up on CSA cases from the 1993 and 2003 schemes was proposed in the Child Maintenance: a new compliance and arrears strategy consultation, published in December 2017.

The consultation explained that the Child maintenance: client funds account 2015 to 2016 stated that £3.1 billion of CSA debt was deemed uncollectable. Some of the debt relates to children who are now adults and some cases involve parents who have moved and not informed CSA, making it difficult to contact them. The older the debt is, the more difficult it is to collect due to its age and often more complex circumstances.

Debt owed to the government and parents

We’ll write off any non-paying debt that is owed to the government (to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions). This is debt built up under a CSA policy that has now ended. This policy required the paying parent (the parent who doesn’t have the main day-to-day care of the child) to pay back the government for some of the benefits paid to support their children.

For some cases, before we write off any debt owed to you, we’ll give you a last opportunity to help us collect the debt from the paying parent. If this doesn’t work, the debt will most likely be written off. For other cases, the debt will automatically be written off.

When we’ll try and collect the debt

We’ll write to you and the other parent about historical debt owed to you if it is:

• over £500 and the case is less than 10 years old
• over £1,000 and the case 10 years old or over

The following must also apply:

• the case is historical debt only and has no on-going liability
• no payment has been made in the past 3 months
• the debt has built up under the CSA (it may have now moved to the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) as part of a CSA case closure)

You’ll be able to ask us to try and collect this debt.

How to ask us to collect the debt

You’ll need to complete the form sent with the letter or write to us separately if you want us to try and collect the debt. This is called ‘making representation’.

You should include any additional information that could help us successfully collect the debt owed to you, for example the paying parent’s employment details or information about their assets.

You must let us know within 60 days of receiving the letter if you want us to try and collect the debt. We will remind you by letter 21 days after the first letter if we haven’t heard from you in this time.

If we do not hear from you at all after 60 days, we’ll write off the debt and inform the paying parent about this.

If you’ve told us you want us to collect the debt

When we’ve received your representation, we’ll carry out some checks to help us decide if it’s likely we can successfully collect the debt.

Checks could include locating the paying parent and finding out about their financial status. If you have any information about the paying parent that could help us collect their debt, let us know.

If it’s unlikely we can collect the debt

If it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to collect any of the debt, we’ll write it off and send you and the other parent a letter.

If there is a chance we can collect the debt

If there is a chance we can collect the debt, we’ll need to gather more evidence from the paying parent to help us make our decision.

At this point they’ll also be able to ‘make representation’. This means informing us about any reason why the debt shouldn’t be collected, and providing evidence to back this up.

After this, we’ll send a letter to you and the other parent to say whether the debt will be collected or written off.

If the paying parent is under sequestration (Scottish bankruptcy), we cannot collect any debt that accrued up to and including the date the paying parent was sequestrated.

Collecting the debt

Once we are confident that we can successfully collect the debt, we’ll verify the amount of debt owed. We’ll then move the case from the CSA computer system to the CMS computer system.

There are several ways in which we can collect the debt. Some examples include:

• making deductions from the paying parent’s earnings
• sending regular or lump sum deduction orders to the paying parent
• in exceptional cases, sending court orders to the paying parent

When we’ll automatically write off CSA debt

We’ll send a letter to you and the other parent to explain that we’ll automatically write the debt off if it is:

• £500 or less and the case is less than 10 years old
• £1,000 or less and the case is 10 years old or older

This debt cannot be collected by the CSA.

If the debt is less than £65 it will be automatically written off and we will not write to you.

More information

If you need more information about historical debt please contact the Child Support Agency or Child Maintenance Service.