A single mum’s brutal and honest open letter to the dad of her children who she claims won’t pay Child Maintenance has gone viral.
The mum, who remains anonymous, took to Facebook yesterday (April 23) to criticise the father who she believes isn’t declaring his full income to the Child Maintenance Service (CMS).
During the long letter which was posted on the blog Single Mum Still Standing, the mother also berates MPs for not doing enough to give the CMS the correct powers to prevent incidents like this.
The message clearly resonated with thousands of parents receiving, at time of writing (April 24) over 3,600 likes and 3,000 shares.
For those who don’t know, child maintenance is financial support which comes in to play when parents divorce or separate.
Covering the costs of everyday living, some parents get away with not paying – despite it being a legal responsibility.
As this single mother writes, despite the father’s claims the money does go towards the children:
Any child maintenance payments made by you to me do not pay for my holidays. I don’t use YOUR money to pay for my clothes, and your payments certainly don’t fund my minor Prosecco addiction.
So when you stalk my Instagram and Facebook and see me making the most of my child-free weekends with friends – rest assured I am funding this.
Let me spell this out for you – any money you pay to help with the raising of our children goes directly to our children. I’ve got two jobs to fund my own lifestyle and pay for our children. It’s a simple concept you don’t seem to be able to grasp.
Then listing where exactly the money does go, the single mother suggested the father takes a walk in her ‘shoes one day’ to see his payments being well spent on the children.
She then confirmed all she asks from the father is 16 per cent of his gross weekly income the government requires him to pay, nothing more.
But as she added, he is unhappy to pay even this writing:
I know that not paying, not paying on time, or not paying the correct amount is the very last bit of control you have over me.
You must feel so powerful when you hold it back for five days, because you can and there’s nothing I can do about it. What a man you are.
Unlike a credit card, you continue to choose to not properly pay for our children a) because nobody knows and b) because the CMS are so useless they aren’t even worth bothering with.
The CMS order you an amount to pay based on the amount YOU have declared to them – but the small wage you pay yourself is not a true reflection of what you actually earn. You’re just so clever – exploiting a loophole to financially abuse our children.
Realising she isn’t the only one who has to deal with this problem, the mother called on MPs to show single parents more support.
She concluded:
I speak on behalf of all single parents when I say this simply isn’t good enough, the current UK system isn’t good enough.
MPs need to wake up and do more to give the CMS better powers to financially investigate non-resident parents.
It’s a problem which affects thousands of single parent families, one many feel they can’t do anything about, but one I’m not prepared to let go. I am fighting this for our children, not for me.
Keep fighting and stay strong!
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