Child Maintenance as Coercive Control: Post-Separation Abuse in Family Law

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Why Family Law Must Catch Up

Family law increasingly recognises that abuse does not end at separation. Yet one of the most pervasive forms of post-separation abuse remains largely unexamined within practice and policy: the use of child maintenance as a tool of coercive control.

This is not an administrative inconvenience. It is a safeguarding issue.

The Legal Framework Already Exists,  But It Isn’t Applied

Under section 1(3) of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, domestic abuse includes economic abuse, defined as behaviour that has a substantial adverse effect on another person’s ability to acquire, use, or maintain money or other property.

Post-separation financial manipulation through child maintenance clearly falls within this definition where it is used to;

• Punish the other parent

• Exert ongoing control

• Destabilise the caregiving household

• Undermine the welfare of the child

Yet in practice, child maintenance is routinely treated as financially neutral, disconnected from abuse dynamics, and siloed away from safeguarding analysis.

This is a mistake.

Coercive Control Does Not Require Proximity

In R v controlling or coercive behaviour [Serious Crime Act 2015, s.76], Parliament explicitly recognised that abuse can be ongoing, cumulative, and psychological, and not reliant on physical proximity.

Family courts have echoed this understanding. In Re H-N and Others (Children) [2021] EWCA Civ 448, the Court of Appeal emphasised that coercive and controlling behaviour must be assessed holistically and contextually, rather than through isolated incidents.

Yet when child maintenance is manipulated, the behaviour is often treated as a “financial dispute” rather than what it is: a pattern of control continuing after separation.

The Weaponisation of Child Maintenance

Practitioners will recognise the pattern;

• A paying parent underpays or stops paying maintenance

• Income is obscured through self-employment or sole directorship

• CMS involvement is framed as hostile or unreasonable

• Payments are adjusted only when it suits the paying parent

• Responsibility is shifted onto the receiving parent (“you took me to CMS”)

Where this conduct is deliberate, strategic, and sustained, it meets the legal threshold for economic abuse.

When children are consequently plunged into poverty while the paying parent maintains a comfortable lifestyle, the issue is no longer merely compliance,  it is harm.

Maintenance as Leverage for Contact

A particularly concerning feature is the linking of maintenance to contact, often framed implicitly;

• Payment is conditional on seeing the child “on my terms”

• Abuse allegations minimised or reframed as conflict

• Reduced or unsafe contact used to justify financial punishment

This dynamic sits uncomfortably alongside PD12J, which requires courts to recognise the impact of domestic abuse on parenting and to ensure that victims are not disadvantaged in proceedings as a result of abuse.

Allowing maintenance to be used as leverage risks replicating abusive power dynamics through state mechanisms.

Children’s Welfare Is Being Actively Undermined

Under s.1 Children Act 1989, the child’s welfare is paramount. Financial stability is a core component of welfare.

Research consistently shows that lack of child maintenance correlates with;

• Food insecurity

• Fuel poverty

• Debt and housing instability

Where non-payment is intentional, the resulting poverty is not incidental,  it is a foreseeable and preventable outcome.

In such cases, the system is not merely failing to protect children; it is inadvertently enabling their harm.

The Overlooked Impact on Second Families

Family law has also failed to grapple with the effect of post-separation financial abuse on second families.

Practitioners increasingly encounter cases where;

• Overnight contact is obstructed

• Contact reduction inflates CMS liability

• Additional payments are demanded beyond statutory maintenance

• New partners, step-children, and new babies are financially destabilised

The law does not recognise “first family priority” as a justification for abuse.

Yet current practice often leaves second families unprotected and invisible.

This is not about diminishing the needs of children from the first relationship. It is about recognising that coercive financial behaviour can harm multiple households simultaneously.

The Accountability Gap

Transparency and accountability are fundamental to safeguarding.

At present;

• Income-hiding through corporate structures remains insufficiently scrutinised

• Deliberate non-payment carries limited consequence

• Public narratives of “good parenting” coexist with private deprivation

Family law would not tolerate this lack of accountability in other safeguarding contexts. Financial abuse should not be the exception.

What Needs to Change

For family law to respond effectively, it must;

• Explicitly recognise child maintenance manipulation as economic abuse

• Integrate CMS behaviour into domestic abuse and safeguarding assessments

• Close loopholes for self-employed parents and company directors

• Prevent maintenance from being used as leverage in contact disputes

• Acknowledge the welfare impact on all children affected, including those in second families

Most importantly, courts and practitioners must name the behaviour for what it is.

Conclusion

Child maintenance exists to support children and not to control former partners, punish separation, or perpetuate abuse.

Until family law fully integrates child maintenance into its understanding of post-separation coercive control, children will continue to bear the cost of adult power struggles,  sanctioned by silence.

Safeguarding does not end at the school gate.

It does not end at separation.

And it should not stop at child maintenance.

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Deanna Newell Family Law

Advocacy for truth-tellers, survivors, and the children who deserve better