Pay child maintenance or face credit rating damage: Justice Department's new crackdown

The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development is forging ahead with its planned move to crack down on those who fail to pay child maintenance by listing them with credit bureaus.

The initiative, which is in line with the requirements of the Maintenance Amendment Act, will enable court officials to forward details of maintenance defaulters to credit bureaus to use against their credit rating.

The Act makes a provision for the forwarding of personal details of the maintenance defaulters who fail to pay child maintenance and have enforcement order judgments against them to the credit bureaus and credit providers.

In November 2024, the department entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Social Justice Foundation and Consumer Profile Bureau.

Responding to parliamentary questions, Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi said the Maintenance Online Listing of Defaulters (MOLD) Project was the first project of the partnership which focused on the implementation of the Maintenance Act.

Kubayi said the MOLD project will encourage maintenance defaulters to pay arrear maintenance as it will impact their credit ratings.

“Listing of maintenance defaulters will strengthen the National Credit Act Regulations as it will serve as a reference point for credit providers to check whether the credit applicant has an existing maintenance obligation,” Kubayi said.

She also said the initiative will assist in the reduction of the financial dissipation by persons with maintenance obligations through obtaining unaffordable credit or credit to the disadvantage of their maintenance obligations.

“It provides an opportunity for the department to determine the impact of listing on compliance with the enforcement orders by maintenance defaulters.”

Kubayi was responding to ANC MP Oscar Mathafa when he asked about the progress made in the implementation of the specified MoU.

In her response, Kubayi said MOLD’s working session has identified services and experiences of the Social Justice Foundation and Consumer Profile Bureau as having strong experience and systems that their maintenance programme could leverage to fast-track some of its internal processes and interventions.

She said the technical working group has been established to identify systems, governance, and technical information.

These will inform the systems development and necessary security arrangements.

“The MOLD solution development is in development progress with Social Justice Foundation (SJF) technical support provided through the Cape Peninsula University of Technology that provides the technical expertise.

“The Consumer Profile Bureau has developed its system and is ready to receive the particulars from SJF. This system has a reporting back facility to enable feedback to the MOLD and maintenance orders management system by indicating the impact of the listing real-time.

“Once completed, the MOLD project will be totally automated and will go a long way to accomplish the full automation of the maintenance process.”

Kubayi said no challenges have been experienced at this stage as the project was still at the systems development stage.

Independent Media reported two years ago that there were 77 778 civil applications in maintenance courts in the 2020/21 financial year.

Gauteng led the pack with 14 380 applications, followed by Limpopo with 11 553, and Western Cape with 11 182.

Eastern Cape recorded 9 320 civil applications, KwaZulu-Natal 8 087, Free State 7 619, Mpumalanga 5 670, North West 6 489, and Northern Cape 3 478.

It was also reported that there were 4 169 criminal applications for maintenance that were lodged in courts during the same period.

Western Cape recorded the highest number of criminal applications at 1 121, followed by Eastern Cape with 895, Free State with 785, Limpopo with 538, Northern Cape with 416, Gauteng with 262, North West with 65, Mpumalanga with 56, and KwaZulu-Natal with 31.

mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za