CMS Arrears Never Expire. Debt From the 1990s Still Counts

People ask about arrears time limits for one of two very different reasons. Either a letter has arrived about a debt from fifteen years ago that the recipient assumed had long since expired, or a parent who is owed thousands wants to know whether it is too late to do anything about it.

The answer is uncomfortable for the first group and encouraging for the second. Child maintenance arrears do not expire. There is no general limitation period. A debt from the 1990s CSA era is, in principle, as legally enforceable today as one that arose last month.

Why there is no time limit

The reasoning behind this is deliberate policy rather than an oversight. Child maintenance is money that was owed for the support of a child at a time when that child needed it. Parliament took the view that allowing a paying parent to simply outlast the debt would reward non payment, and that a parent who successfully avoided paying for six years should not be rewarded with a clean slate.

The practical consequence is that historic CSA arrears transferred into CMS systems remain live. Many parents receive contact about balances they had entirely forgotten, sometimes decades later.

Arrears versus backdating: two different things

This distinction causes more confusion than almost anything else in the system, so it is worth being precise.

So a parent who never applied usually cannot recover the years before applying, while a parent with an existing assessment can pursue unpaid amounts indefinitely. Our full guide to whether child maintenance can be backdated covers the first situation, and our backdate calculator and arrears calculator handle the arithmetic for each.

Do arrears stop when the child grows up?

No. Ongoing liability ends when the qualifying child is no longer covered, generally at 16, or up to 20 in approved full time non advanced education. But arrears that accrued before that point survive the child reaching adulthood.

The debt is owed to the receiving parent, or in some historic CSA cases partly to the Secretary of State where benefits were paid. It does not transfer to the child, and the adult child has no standing to pursue it themselves.

This is why parents are sometimes pursued for arrears relating to children who are now in their thirties.

When arrears can be written off

Write off is possible, but it is narrower and rarer than people hope. The main powers sit in the Child Support (Management of Payments and Arrears) Regulations 2009, as amended in 2018.

Circumstances where write off may apply

• The receiving parent asks for it. They can tell the CMS they no longer want the arrears pursued. This is the most straightforward route and it is entirely their decision.
• The paying parent has died. The CMS may pursue the estate, but often writes off where there is nothing to recover.
• The receiving parent has died and there is no one to pay the money to.
• Small historic CSA balances where the cost of collection exceeds the value, particularly under the arrears clearance exercise that dealt with the old CSA caseload.
• Official error where the arrears arose from a CMS mistake and it would be unfair to enforce them.
• The debt is genuinely irrecoverable after all reasonable enforcement has been exhausted.

Circumstances where write off will not apply

• The debt is simply very old
• The paying parent cannot currently afford it, which is a reason to negotiate a payment schedule, not to cancel
• The child is now an adult
• The parents have privately agreed between themselves to forget it, unless the receiving parent formally tells the CMS
• The paying parent is unhappy with how the original assessment was made, which is a reason to challenge the decision rather than the debt

Is the arrears figure actually right?

Before treating a historic balance as settled fact, it is worth testing it. Arrears balances carried over from CSA systems are not always reliable, and there are well documented cases of figures that were wrong for years.

Things worth checking:

1. Ask for a full statement of account. You are entitled to a breakdown showing how the balance was built up, period by period. Ask for it in writing.
2. Check the assessment periods. Was there a period when the children were living with you, or when shared care should have reduced the figure?
3. Check for payments not credited. Direct payments made between parents, particularly cash or informal transfers, are frequently missing from CMS records. Bank statements are the evidence that matters here.
4. Check whether a decision was ever properly notified. Arrears based on a decision that was never validly notified may be challengeable.
5. Check for duplicated CSA and CMS periods. Cases that transferred between systems occasionally double count.

Our arrears calculator lets you rebuild what the balance should be from the assessed weekly amount and the payments actually made, which is often the fastest way to see whether the official figure is plausible.

If you think the balance is wrong, that is a dispute about a decision, and the usual deadlines apply. A mandatory reconsideration normally has to be requested within one month of the decision you are challenging.

How arrears get collected

Where there is ongoing liability, the CMS will normally collect arrears alongside current maintenance rather than as a separate demand. The standard approach is to add an amount on top of the regular payment, with the aim of clearing the balance within a reasonable period. What counts as reasonable depends on the size of the debt and what the paying parent can afford.

Where there is no ongoing liability, because the children have grown up, the CMS collects the arrears alone. The same enforcement powers are available:

• Deduction from Earnings Order taken directly from wages
• Regular or lump sum deduction orders from a bank or building society account
• A liability order from the magistrates court, which opens the door to enforcement agents and charging orders
• Disqualification from driving or holding a passport, and in extreme cases committal to prison

The severe sanctions require a court and are used rarely. Our guide to CMS liability orders sets out what the law actually permits, as opposed to what people are often told on the phone.

If you are the paying parent facing historic arrears

1. Do not ignore it. Enforcement escalates and the powers available are significant. Engagement almost always produces a better outcome than silence.
2. Request the full statement of account and check it properly before agreeing to anything.
3. Gather evidence of payments made. Old bank statements are worth the effort of obtaining. Banks will normally provide six years, and sometimes more on request.
4. Negotiate a realistic schedule. The CMS can spread arrears over an extended period. A sustainable arrangement you actually keep to is far better than an ambitious one you default on.
5. If the figure is wrong, challenge the decision rather than simply disputing the total, and watch the one month deadline.
6. Get free debt advice from StepChange or Citizens Advice if this sits alongside other debts. Child maintenance is a priority debt and should be treated as one.

If you are owed historic arrears

1. It is not too late. There is no time limit, so age alone is not a reason the CMS can refuse to pursue a balance.
2. Ask what enforcement action has actually been taken, and when. Cases do go dormant, and asking is often what restarts them.
3. Provide any information you have about employment, self employment, property or bank accounts. The CMS has powers to obtain information but has to know where to look.
4. Push for a liability order if straightforward deduction has failed. It unlocks the stronger enforcement powers.
5. Complain formally if nothing is happening. Our complaints letter generator produces a structured complaint, and an MP referral is effective when a case has genuinely stalled.
6. Be aware you can ask for arrears to be written off if you decide you no longer want them pursued. That is your choice alone and you should not be pressured into it.

The bigger picture

Unpaid child maintenance is not a marginal problem. The cumulative arrears figure across the CMS and the historic CSA caseload runs into hundreds of millions of pounds, and a substantial proportion of it is considered unlikely ever to be collected. We look at what the official data shows in our analysis of the latest CMS statistics.

That context matters when setting expectations. The absence of a time limit means a claim is never legally too late. It does not mean that old debt is easy to collect, and a receiving parent chasing a twenty year old balance against someone with no traceable income and no assets faces a genuinely difficult task. The legal position and the practical position are not the same thing.