Child support payments are a “tool of violence” used against women escaping from domestic or family abuse, and legal advocates say the system needs to change.

In Australia, one parent has to pay the other to support their shared children after a separation.

But a report from Women’s Legal Services Australia has found recipients - nearly 85 per cent of whom are women - can be denied child support payments by their former partners.

This allows perpetrators of violence an avenue to continue their abuse, often without penalties.

“The non-payment or underpayment of child support is enabled by a system that tends to take a hands-off approach, giving fathers an undesirable amount of control,” the report read.

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Survivors of family violence can seek an exemption from child support, but this means they miss out on supplemental income.

Women’s Legal Services Australia executive Lara Freidin has called for non-payment, underpayment and delayed payment of child support to be recognised as a form of economic abuse, as her clients called it a “tool of violence”.

“We are seeing fathers take extraordinary measures to reduce their taxable incomes and underpay child support, from refusing to lodge tax returns to working cash in hand jobs,” she said.

“Women, who are already facing significant economic disadvantage within their working and social lives, some of whom are living in poverty, are forced to bear the burden of pursing their ex-partners for non-payment under the current system.”

AAP