The Most Recent Reforms to the Child Maintenance System - Essay Example

The most recent reforms to the child maintenance system are good news for fathers but not mothers. Introduction The UK governments proposed child maintenance reforms was published in January 2011 as a green paper titled, Strengthening families, promoting parental responsibility: the future of child maintenance.1 The reforms were proposed on the assumption that in divorces, the support given by government to decide upon the maintenance to be given, has a tendency to deepen the conflict between the divorcing parents.2 3 4It was declared in the green paper that “ the child maintenance system needs to be re-balanced towards supporting parents to work collaboratively rather than entering conflict” and the solution put forth was “to encourage and support families to take responsibility by making their own arrangements for child maintenance wherever possible.”5 Child Maintenance and Charging The practical implementation of this new approach necessitate the parents are charged a fee for availing the assistance of governments child maintenance services.6 And the charges are: An upfront application charge of around £100 to be paid by the applicant. A total application charge for parents on benefits in the range of £50 with £20 of this paid upfront and the remainder paid in installments. The installments for the application only become payable where maintenance is in payment. Therefore a parent on benefit who applies will never pay more than the upfront charge if no maintenance is received from the application. A charge of £20-25 for the calculation only service to be paid by the applicant. A collection surcharge (on top of maintenance to be paid) of between 15% and 20% to be paid by the non-resident parent. A collection deduction charge (retained from maintenance collected for the parent with care) of between 7% and 12%. A charge on the non-resident parent when enforcement measures (e.g. an order of sale for property) need to be used because of non-compliance. An application charge for the calculation only service.7 This reform is criticized by many because its impact is to be primarily on mothers,8 In most of the cases, it would be the women who apply for a maintenance as they would be the care-giving parent.9 1011It is so because “fathers on the whole do not negotiate full-time work with daily responsibility for child care, especially very young children, either during or after marriage.”12 A study by Atkinson and Mckay concluded that non-resident parents had no wish to share parental responsibility.13 The DWP Equality Impact Assessment for the Green Paper has observed “that 95% of parents with care are women, and a similar proportion of non-resident parents are men...”14 It is officially calculated,”the full cost of an application is likely to be around £200. 15 The women in Britain mostly work in “part-time, low paid, (and) insecure jobs...”16 17 The single mothers have to schedule their working hours so as to undertake child care also.18 19 Mostly, this is why “ women poverty begins with divorce...”20 The new reforms are sure to put more financial burden on such women, who are already under-privileged. Here, it is important also to note that there is a proven connection “between poverty and single parenthood.”21 Power equations and maintenance Under the new provisions, if both the parents agree upon a maintenance amount under family agreement, they need not go to the government service provider.22 The power to take such a decision rests equally with the “parent with care” and the “non-resident parent.”23 If a non-resident parent decides to “pay by maintenance direct”, that is, not through government agency, then he/she can do so.24 The non-resident parent most often being the father, this might be a convenient decision for him, as he could avoid government action on non-payment. A Relationship Separation and Child Support Study carried out by a group of researchers showed that it was mainly the non-resident parents who supported family-based arrangements.25 If such a decision is taken, it would mostly be the father who took the decision, given the prevailing family hierarchy in a patriarchal society. Inside a household, there is a gender element at play in decision-making, tilting the power equation in favour of the man.26 27 Also, “as with any family-based arrangement there may be a difference between the maintenance liability agreed privately and that if the arrangement was through the statutory scheme.”28 Here, the government itself is admitting tthat in a family-based agreement, the maintenance liability could be different from what would be decided by the delegated government system. The impact assessment for the Green Paper has said, “there is no evidence at present to determine whether a parent with care who would choose a family-based arrangement through the gateway instead of using the statutory scheme under the current policy would receive more or less child maintenance...”29 Though the new reform rules have set forth certain norms to address the non-payment after a family-based agreement, the process practically could take time. For example, the green paper has said that: If the non-resident parent does not make their child maintenance payments on time and for the Full amount the parent with care will be able to return to the Collection Service where CMEC will collect payments from the non-resident parent using enforcement measures as appropriate. This might lead to a small cost to the parent with care for the period in which the maintenance direct payment was attempted which may be around a months worth of liability.30 According to this provision, in result, the carer (mostly mother) has to pay the penalty for the non-payment of maintenance by the non-resident parent (mostly father), which amounts to a gender bias. In effect, the mothers will have to pay “an upfront fee of £100 for pursuing wont-pay fathers, and (the agency) will then take a permanent commission of between 7% and 12% for collecting the money...”31 History of child maintenance in UK and gender The laws in favour of the parent of care, has been a hard earned victory for the same, who are mostly women. The beginning was when a Child Support Agency was formed in 1993 “to assess, collect and enforce child maintenance payments from non-resident parents ...”32 But the functioning of this agency was far below expectations.33 34The next major step was in 2000 when the method of calculating maintenance was delineated in a simple manner “ through the Child Maintenance Premium, (and) parents with care claiming benefit were allowed to keep up to £10 a week of any maintenance received...”35 Still a majority of children in UK were not receiving maintenance.36 It was in this context that UK government entrusted Sir David Henshaw with the task of “redesign(ing) the child maintenance system...”37 Based on the recommendations made by Henshaw, a white paper was brought out which initiated a paradigm shift in the vision of the government. It was declared in this white paper that “parents would be encouraged and enabled to take responsibility for making their own child maintenance arrangements ...”38 Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 constituted the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission to chase non-paying parents39 This act also repealed the ineffective Child Support Agency.40 At that time, the Child Support Agency was on an average receiving around 50,000 complaints every year.41 Meanwhile, a regulatory impact assessment made on Henshaw model showed that “approximately 250,000 parents with care” will be affected every year if it is implemented.42 Even so, the government went ahead with its paradigm change based on Henshaw proposals. In the meantime, the Welfare Reforms Act 2009 had established more serious penalty for non-payment of maintenance than that existed.43 The Welfare Reform Bill 2009 – Regulatory Impact Assessment stressed that strict penalties had increased compliance percentage in other countries and hence favoured it.44 Many other studies have also made the same conclusion.45 And the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 promulgated that maintenance must be calculated not based on net income but gross income of the non-resident parent.46 All these legal measures belonged to a women-friendly tradition which is reversed by the new reform. Responses to new reforms The new reform presented as part of the Welfare Reform Bill, was criticized by many as giving “wont-pay dads a way out...”47 Toynbee called it, “fathers day admonition to men who refuse to pay for their deserted children...”48 The guardian published another report that said, this reform “would hit poorest families hardest...”49 It was also reported, “the fee would mainly be paid by single mothers who were already under considerable financial pressure...”50 Charities were “complaining that women will be penalised unfairly by new child support proposals.”51 The fifth report of Work and Pensions Committee on the Governments Proposed Child Maintenance Reforms has cited a study conducted by National Center for Social Research, “which found that only 4% of parents with care would be likely to move from the statutory CSA service to private arrangements...”52 The reasons why parents with care did not like family-based solution were: They wouldnt feel sure they would get paid (68%) They had a bad relationship with / didnt trust their ex-partner (61%) They were not sure they would get the right money (52%) They were not sure they would get paid on time (52%).53 Another study showed “less than half the parents awarded child support receive payment in full.54 A co-ordinated effort to ensure child maintenance by both parents after divorce, though an ideal solution, is a difficult to materialize proposition owing to strained relationships and communication gaps. To think that this could be brought about simply by entrusting the estranged parents the responsibility to fix a maintenance arrangement is an unrealistic proposition. Non-payment of maintenance in UK has a long history. In 2006, the Child Support Agency had under its consideration, 750,000 cases of non-resident parents who were asked to pay maintenance but “ only 455,000 either paid through the Child Support Agency Collection Service or had a Maintenance Direct arrangement in place...”55 Rights of Women, an organization of women has questioned the reform by asking, “how voluntary arrangements would be conducted safely in the context of an abusive relationship?.”56 The report published by the Work and Pensions Select Committee on governments child maintenance reforms has wanted “the Government to establish a more efficient way to administer the statutory child maintenance service, the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission” rather than leaving everything into the hands of the estranged spouses.57 The Organisaton for Economic Cooperation and Development has observed that “collection of child support payment by public agencies avoids unnecessary conflict between parents.”58 Welfare of women and children The impact of divorce on children is also less if proper maintenance is paid. For example, “identifying strategies for reducing financial hardship among custodial parents (generally mothers) following family breakdown”59 could be a crucial strategy for child welfare. The child support policies of the UK government had been criticized for not being very child-friendly.60 61 A study by Belinda Fehlberg and Mavis Maclean concluded that this reform is indicative of a future where fathers will have to pay less child support than what they pay now.62 There is also criticism raised that in Britain, “revenue recovery was by far the dominant motivation for child support reform.”63 And a “trend for blending the administration of benefits with the collection of tax has extended from structure to the foundations of some aspects of (the new) law.”64 It is also curious to note that the Department of Work and Pensions has set a target to reduce the number of people who avail “incapacity benefits” by “one million.”65Putting this kind of a blind target, can only result in the deprivation of the marginalized groups including women. And what this target shows is that this is the general approach now. Conclusion Britain with “the highest proportion of single mothers in the European Union,”66 and the percentage of single mothers “increasing from 10 per cent to 25 in the past 20 years,”67 needs to rethink this new reform. While the pre-reform scenario gave divorced single-parenting woman some relief, there were also prevailing problems which forced single mothers to work once their youngest child grows up to the age of three.68 Or they were to “face benefit cuts”.69 One in 15 households in the country now being headed by single mothers,70 the issue has grown in gravity. The new plan by British government to “to roll all work-related benefits into one universal credit and cut the amount of help it gives with childcare”71 is just the wider context of the reform. Such policy changes aim to alter the very benefits culture of UK upon which the lives of marginalised people depend.72 The projections show that “single mothers will be three times worse off than childless couples […] [in] 2015”.73But even amidst this bleak scenario, recommendations made by Work and Pensions Committee Fifth Report, provide some hope as it asked the government to ensure that “in cases where a parent with care has taken all reasonable steps to reach a voluntary agreement, the proposed charges should be paid by the non-resident parent”.74 Rethinking on similar lines is the necessity of the hour. Bibliography Atkinson, A. and Mckay, S., Child Support Reform: The Views and experiences of CSA Staff and New clients, Department for Work and Pensions, Research report No.232, 2005, retrieved 22 July 2011, . BBC News, Child Support Reform: A Disaster, 5 July 2007, retrieved 27 July 2011, . 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