A new scandal has just been blown-open by investigative journalists in the UK. The ‘Child Maintenance Service’ (CMS) is the government agency who calculates and enforces child support payments from non-custodial parents, which for decades has been beleaguered with accusations of corruption, incompetence and criminal activity. At the centre, millions upon millions of pounds of child maintenance payments have been wrongly taken from parents. Among these allegations – Endless amounts of letters, harassing and blackmailing parents. Terrifying tales of CMS staff laughing off or flatly ignoring technical errors in their system. Mothers and fathers plunged into bankruptcy, left using foodbanks, or selling their homes, to pay money they don’t even owe. And it doesn’t matter if a parent claims the CMS “got it wrong”, they don’t care what paperwork you present, or even if you cancel your direct debit… The CMS can just take your money without even asking, directly from your bank, or from your paycheque itself. Even when the judicial system wades in, in an attempt to overturn payments, the CMS have continued to wrongly take payments they are not owed. Such a thing is tantamount to financial abuse and coercion, on a systemic scale, and it is being done by our own government agency; destroying the lives of hard-working parents, who never did anything wrong. And if you were thinking this sounds eerily similar to the Post Office scandal that hit the headlines just a few years ago, then I agree, it is. So what has been happening behind the scenes of the CMS? And what are the tragic stories, and the paths of destruction left behind in their wake? What do you think? ~ Full Investigation 

2026-07-30