Closed petition Stop Deduction from Earnings Orders (DEO) for child maintenance debts

Closed on 11 February 2023

The Government should stop child maintenance debts being collected by the Child Maintenance Service through Deduction from Earnings Orders (DEO). Instead the CMS should be required to engage with the paying parent and agree repayments based on affordability assessment.

Deduction of Earnings Orders are a controversial form of collection that take money from a Non-Resident Parent’s (NRP) earnings every month. The principle behind this is that a parent who is refusing to pay has an order to make the deductions.

We call on the UK Government to understand the pressures this can put on NRPs and replace it with a process focusing on the affordability of payments through means testing for the paying parent.