Sinister reason man’s salary slid from $200k

There’s a $1.7 billion problem lurking in Australia and it’s pushing people into poverty and causing devastating consequences.

When Leah* was with her ex-husband he was a high-flying executive earning $200,000 but his salary suddenly plummeted when it came to paying child support after a horrific divorce.

Her ex-husband now claims he only earns $24,000 a year, amid a growing epidemic of men under-reporting their salary to get away with paying little or no child support.

Australians owe approximately $1.7 billion in unpaid child support.

For Leah, it’s created a situation where she has been “financially devastated” as she struggles to look after her two teenage children full time, despite leaving a relationship marred by coercive control and mental abuse.

“I had a large portion of financial wealth that I had put in the house. He had it ordered by the court that it was sold and I never once signed a single document, so the house was sold from underneath me,” she told news.com.au.

“It made the children and I homeless and we ended up in a refuge. I don’t know how that was allowed to happen when I owned that house and suddenly it was on the market. I didn’t know when it was sold, the amount it was sold for, I didn’t know anything – it went into a trust.

“These are the kinds of things women go through and now the children and I have to navigate the Sydney rental market, which is very tricky.

“It’s huge for the children. They ended up a in refuge, when their house that was their own home, sat their empty for six months and we drove past it every day for school and we couldn’t enter.”

Leah said the children suffer the most in this situation. Picture: istock

Amid the divorce, Leah said her ex also walked away with $250,000 in superannuation while her balance sits at just $27,000.

“I’ve been left decimated financially and I’m the one who is caring for the children,” she added.

Initially the 45-year-old had a domestic violence exemption with the child support agency so her ex-partner couldn’t contact them but it also resulted in no money being paid.

“You are taking an option for it to be harder financially just for the safety side of things, which doesn’t add up,” she explained.

“As the other party are getting away with not paying any child support, but that’s the only option that has been given to you.”

Finally, Leah entered the child support system but gets less than $300 a month from her ex-husband, which she said “doesn’t even cover a food shop for a week”, and is also rarely paid on time. She is sure this is a deliberate act to continue to make her “struggle”.

“The bit I find hard is his salary doesn’t add up for the lifestyle he lives,” she added, which includes overseas holidays and a nice place to live.

Instead she makes sacrifices to ensure she can provide for their children. This includes no hairdresser visits and rarely going out, while she also hasn’t seen family overseas in seven years.

‘There are many times I’ve not eaten, not in recent months, but there has been times where there hasn’t been enough so of course you give it to your children,” she said.

Her weekly rent adds up to $1200 for a modest house in Sydney, which was nearly double what she used to pay on the mortgage, she noted.

Leah wants to see the system changed so women aren’t pushed into poverty. Picture: iStock

Leah notes a range of experts have described how the system is pushing women into “financial insecurity and poverty through no fault of their own”.

‘The system needs reform and change because it’s allowing this to happen,” she said.

“I don’t know what else to do. I have exhausted all the avenues but the way systems have been set up, it’s allowing this to continue to happen.

“There’s no penalty if they don’t pay on time, no penalty if they reduce their salary drastically, there is nothing to hold men accountable on this.

“The people that suffer, and the part I feel most strongly about, is the children and by causing that instability to the payment to the mother — you are actually causing instability to the children.

“There has to be a change for millions of other children who are stuck in this system and mothers as well.”

She also described the child support system as incredibly invasive with the agency requiring people to provide bank statements, which are shared with the other parent, if they are seeking a change of assessments for payments.

She simply doesn’t feel safe doing this meaning she misses out on challenging his salary.

“That is highly worrying to send to someone who can then see where you are and what you’re doing,” she added.

Leah’s kids had to live in a refuge at one stage. Picture: File photo

She said she has made a report to the ATO to investigate her ex-partner’s salary but that has led nowhere. Then it’s hit and miss with the child support agency where some can see the control and abuse being perpetrated through the system and “others just haven’t gotten it”.

“I think financial abuse and economic abuse hasn’t been regarded as serious enough,” she noted.

“I think sometimes it’s not actually understood but it has massive impacts on the family and the person it is being done to.”

While, Leah is hopeful that new coercive control laws introduced this year will bring about change, she added the situation sadly has her counting down the days until her kids turn 18.

“There is a huge worry over my head about keeping a roof over our head,” she said.

“It’s a very difficult market anyway but when you are a single parent and you have that level of responsibility you lie awake thinking about it and you don’t know if the parent is going to give you any money that month.”

Rebecca Glenn founded the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety (CWES). PIcture: Supplied

Founder and chief executive of the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety (CWES) Rebecca Glenn said Australia’s child support system is facilitating perpetrators of domestic violence to continue to exert financial control over their partners post-separation.

“It’s robbing children of their health, their wellbeing, and their potential,” she said.

She said the women who seek help at her organisation share similar issues with non-payment of child support, manipulation or underpayment.

“It is simply too easy to avoid the obligation to support your children under the current system,” she noted.

“Unfortunately, very few non-payers are held to account, and the burden to prove inaccurate declarations or assessments falls on victims survivors of domestic violence and financial abuse.”

She added perpetrators want to show their ex-partner they can still exert control but it’s the children that suffer.

“Sometimes its not the non-payment or minimising of payments but manipulating the timing of their declarations (to the ATO) to create a government debt for their ex-partner due to overpayment of family tax benefit,” she said.

Children are suffering because of the system. Picture: iStock

The vast majority of people doing this are men which explains why there are such high rates of poverty among single mothers in Australia, she added.

Ms Glenn was also critical of the exemption system where women try to escape contact with the perpetrator but then the men avoid paying child support.

“It is absolutely perverse that we have a system that financially rewards abusive people by exempting them from paying people while requiring further work from survivors to access enough money to survive,” she added.

She agreed that urgent changes to the system are needed including child support guaranteed by the government with non-payments chased through the tax office and loopholes like manipulating incomes closed to ensure children are not going without “because of the choice of abusive parents to shirk their responsibility”.

A spokesperson for Department of Social Services said the Child Support Scheme has extensive and effective collection powers, including the ability to garnish wages, bank accounts, and government payments, intercept tax refunds, and litigate and prevent overseas travel.

They added legislation introduced in 2023 strengthened powers to increase debt collection through employer withholding and prevent overseas departures.

Services Australia referred 161,995 people who had not met their lodgement requirements to the Australian Taxation Office for compliance action, they added, with 106,750 tax refunds intercepted and used to repay $138.6 million in child support debt.

“As part of the response to recommendations made by the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System, the Department of Social Services, Services Australia, the Australian Tax Office and the Treasury are reviewing child support compliance, with a particular focus on improved collection and enforcement,” they said.

*Name has been changed

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