Perth woman owed $200,000 in child support, with nothing anyone can do

Trish Price has tried everything to give her children a good upbringing.

The 43-year-old has studied and worked as a support worker and for most of her children’s lives has held down two jobs, often cleaning houses and working in restaurants on top of a full-time role.

Trish Price is owed over $200,000 in child support.

But still she breaks down as she talks about how she feels she has let them down, unable to provide them with a stable home, five of them currently crammed into an old caravan bought with what little savings she could scrape together.

Her story is not unique, as the cost of living and all-time high rental prices drive many out of homes, but for Price things could, and should, be very different.

The mother of five is owed more than $200,000 in child support and despite lodging complaints, lobbying MPs and even embarking on her own investigation, she was told nothing could be done to recover the debt.

Trish Price is owed over $200,000 in child support.

“Ideally, it would be like in America where they would have to face the court system or jail, or a massive fine,” she said.

“They just can’t clock up that ridiculous amount and just carry on like nothing’s changed in their worlds.”

Price is not alone. There is currently $1.69 billion of child support owed to thousands of single parents and children across Australia.

Deb Tsorbaris, chief executive of the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare, says the system needs a major overhaul.

“While the costs of living are increasing, child support payments remain stagnant and significant numbers of parents are allowed to default,” she said.

“This is markedly increasing the material disadvantage experienced by Australian children, increasing the likelihood of ongoing disadvantage. We must invest in resolving this issue for the current and future economic and social benefit of the country as a whole.”

Tsorbaris has called on the federal government to look at the “poorly designed and ineffective” child support system.

Services Australia said they have a number of means of trying to attempt recovery of funds from non-paying parents, including deducting child support from a parent’s salary or wage, intercepting tax refunds, collecting via third parties such as banks, deducting payments from social security and other government payments, preventing a person from leaving Australia (DPOs) and litigation action to recover a child support debt in any court with family law jurisdiction.

But sometimes even these methods fail.

The father of two of Price’s children has never paid her a cent in child support for 17 years, has avoided filing for any tax refunds and has not yet attempted to leave the country.

“After a couple of years of them not getting any new information, they just put it down as a non-pursuit of debt,” she said, of Services Australia.

“So that means they’re not actively ringing him or sending him letters anymore.

“Then after a couple of years they’ll open it back up and they’ll ring me and say, have you got any new information?”

Price took it upon herself to try to investigate his whereabouts by looking up ABNs, calling banks and even begging his family for information.

A few years ago, she gave up.

“I get to the point where I’m so low, down and out, broken, most of the time, that to take that on, it just all seems too much for me,” she said.

“It just makes me worse, mentally.”

Last year when the rent on her Lesmurdie rental property was upped to $480 a week, the struggle became too much.

“I couldn’t afford it anymore,” she said.

“Then I was looking around for somewhere else and I was fighting with 100 people for disgusting little dumps and I didn’t want to put myself through that anymore.”

Instead she bought a small caravan and has been rotating between van parks, now unable to work because of her transiency.

Despite her circumstances, Price says her children are happy.

“They’ve got nothing they really need or want,” she said.

“We’ve got each other, we’ve got food every day.

“But it’s not fair.”

As a result of WAtoday’s enquiries, Services Australia said they would again look into Price’s situation.

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