Child Maintenance Service Bailiffs

I’ve been dealing with CMS, and CSA before them, for a number of years now and been through the bailiff process a few times. It’s not a quick process.

The case will be in your partner’s name so she would need to call CMS and ask for an update on the case. She should also have been given details of how to access the online case details so she can see the assessment details, payments received, copies of letters sent to her etc.

If the case was set up as Collect & Pay, CMS should be contacting the paying parent to arrange payment of any arrears and discuss the method for ongoing payments. There has to be a certain amount of arrears before CMS can make an application for a Liability Order. This makes the debt legally recognised and it can then be passed out to bailiffs for collection. This process can take months to be completed and then the bailiffs will work on the case for minimum of 6 months.

If you only paid the £20 application fee a year ago, it won’t have been to court for Legal Sanctions (threat of jail basically) via CMS yet as it’s not been ongoing long enough. Happy to help with the knowledge I have from my case if I could ask a few questions please. Just to clarify though, you don’t pay any more £20 fees, that’s a one off fee at the start to set up a CMS case. There may be Collect & Pay fees deducted from each payment though.

- Did your partner have a case set up with CSA originally?
- If so, was it the CSA case that has been via the courts and if so when? Was the court case just for the Liability Order or has there definitely been a Legal Sanctions hearing (where committal to prison may have been discussed)
- if no previous CSA case, had she originally had court-ordered child support set up via a divorce? This may be where there was talk of committal for non-payment.
- Does the online case show two different sets of arrears Making up the total owed? One line will say something like “Previous Outstanding Arrears” and the other will say “Previous Active Arrears”. This is an indication of a previous CSA case where debt has been transferred to CMS for continued collection.
- Is there a letter in the Messages history to confirm a Liability Order being granted and then anything about which Bailiff is dealing with the case? I was given contact details for the bailiffs, have you/your partner been given similar?
- Has your partner been sent a booklet to complete to provide the enforcement team/bailiffs with information and photos to help them with collection of the debt? I remember filling this out twice and sending copy photos for them to use to prove they were speaking to the correct person on doorstep visits.

You need to find out when the case was actually referred to the Bailiffs and how much for. They normally keep them 6 months, depending on their success with collecting payments and no other enforcement will normally be made for any other arrears during that time. CMS will contact the NRP though to encourage payment of the ongoing support payments.

An update also needs to be requested from the bailiffs as to the current status of their actions. When they are collecting payments, they send them on to CMS in batches so there can be delays between them obtaining the money and it reaching CMS. Bailiffs also charge fees which they will take the majority of from the first payment/s received so there may have been next to nothing to transfer to CMS. As an example, the first payment they collected from my ex was for £120 and I got just over £2 of it.

The Bailiffs are unlikely to seize goods, it’s not completely impossible but it’s not their usual way of recovering child support debts. They just keep trying with calls and Visits. After a period of non-payment, they will eventually return the case to CMS with a Nulla Bona, which is a formal confirmation that they have failed to secure payment.

Sorry that was so long but it’s such a complex process that you need to keep a close track of everything. I kept a notebook log and would call at least every two weeks, more often than not every week, to get an update.