A mum-of-two has spoken of her disgust after she was told the child maintenance owed to her by her ex for their children will never be paid.
She is one of thousands of parents across the UK who has been told collecting money owed to them by their ex partner is 'not possible'.
The mum says she received a letter at the start of May in which the Government admits the debt has been written off for good, Hull Live reports.
She said she does not know the exact amount she is owed but said she was fuming when she received the letter.
"What sort of message does this send to fathers now who should be paying maintenance but aren't," she asked.
The Government's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announced last year it would write off debts of £2.5 billion, which is owed to nearly one million families across the UK, because they fear there is no chance of recouping it.
The DWP have published a consultation which also shows a further 320,000 cases have debts worth £1.2bn owed to the Government.
The debts are all owed through the old Child Support Agency (CSA), which was replaced in 2012 with the Child Maintenance Service (CMS.)
The letter, sent to resident parents on behalf of the CSA, says: "We've found that regrettably, collecting unpaid maintenance owed to you is not possible and we've permanently written it off.
"You don't need to take any action. We won't contact you again."
The mum-of-two said: "I was left to bring up my two children on my own, but the Child Support Agency had a log of what was owed, I never imagined it would be written off.
"How can they just send you a letter and tell you it's tough, that they won't bother chasing it?
"What sort of message does this send to fathers now who should be paying maintenance but aren't?
"They probably think if they don't bother it will eventually get wiped at some point anyway."
Receiving parents with debt of more than £1,000 for claims made on or before November 1, 2008, or £500 for claims made after November 1, 2008, are given 60 days to make representations before the debt is wiped.
Those owed less than £1,000 are not given the option to appeal.
Another Hull mum who has also received the same letter said: "I can understand why some of it is being written of, but it should be up to the person to decide.
"He's got away again with not paying. It is a joke. So many like him get away with it."
In the report, the DWP says to attempt to collect all of the £3.7bn CSA debt would cost around £1.5bn. The consultation says: "This would involve us working every case.
"It is extremely difficult to anticipate our expected level of collection from this activity. We have estimated that we might be able to collect between £0.1bn and £0.6bn.
"The £0.6bn is based on achieving 100 per cent compliance in the cases where we can recover – this is highly unlikely to be the case.
"The likely low levels of collection are due to out of date information making it hard to trace paying parents, as well as them simply not having the resources to pay these debts.
"As part of the introduction of the CMS, we are closing all CSA cases so that all cases can be managed on one system.
"We began closing CSA cases with on-going maintenance liabilities in 2014 and expect to have completed this in 2018.
"This will leave over 500,000 arrears-only cases on the CSA computer systems. Keeping the CSA computer systems running costs around £30 million a year.
"Moving all the debt to the CMS system would cost around £230 million, requiring a check of the debt balance for each case before it is moved to ensure it is correct.
"Each of these options would require significant amounts of taxpayer funding while doing nothing to increase the amount of money flowing to children.
"In addition to being costly, maintaining the historic debt on either the old or the new system will create prolonged uncertainty for both parents as to what, if any, further enforcement steps may be taken and when this might be."
Although the DWP confirmed it has published a consultation which assessed the number of cases affected and the amounts under consideration.
A spokeswoman said: “We are committed to recovering child maintenance and recently introduced tougher powers to take people’s assets into account.
“We are exploring ways to tackle historic arrears, collecting unpaid maintenance where appropriate.”
The DWP says it intends to publish further analysis next month.
