Leicester City title-winning captain Wes Morgan must pay £137,000 child maintenance arrears to each of two mothers

Published 21 October 2026, 16:23

• Lady Justice King ruled at the Court of Appeal that Morgan cannot dodge court-ordered 'top-up' payments
• Morgan claimed he was unemployed after retiring in 2021 — but a tribunal found he earned up to £240,000 a year
• The ex-defender, who once pocketed £3 million annually, admitted he knew his nil assessment was wrong

Former Leicester City captain Wes Morgan must face enforcement of child maintenance arrears of roughly £137,000 owed to each of two mothers of his children, the Court of Appeal ruled, rejecting his argument that the court orders requiring the payments had automatically lapsed.

Lady Justice King, with Sir Stephen Cobb, President of the Family Division, and Lady Justice Asplin agreeing, dismissed Morgan's appeal against Leyla Antoniou and allowed an appeal by Karla Morrell, reinstating her claim to enforce arrears of more than £137,000 plus inflation linking.

Morgan, named in the proceedings as Westley Nathan Morgan, was a Premier League footballer who captained Leicester City when the club won the Premier League in May 2016 and the FA Cup in 2021.

When a consent order in favor of Ms. Antoniou was made on September 15, 2020, he was earning in the region of £3 million a year.

Morgan received his last payment from Leicester City in August 2021.

On September 24, 2021, he told the Child Maintenance Service he was unemployed.

On February 16, 2022, the CMS reduced his maintenance liability to a nil rate, backdated to the date of his application.

In October 2023, the CMS Financial Investigation Unit revised that nil decision on the basis of misrepresentation by Morgan.

In March 2025, a First-tier Tribunal found his annual income over the previous four years had actually been between £220,000 and £240,000.

When the CMS put that decision into effect in June 2025, its assessment found that Morgan had consistently held a gross weekly income exceeding £3,000 — the threshold at which the CMS formula applies its maximum payment.

Morgan acknowledged in a witness statement, dated July 15, 2025, that the CMS decision to reduce his maintenance payments to zero was incorrect, given that he had additional rental income.

Two consent orders were at the heart of the case.

The September 2020 order required Morgan to pay Ms. Antoniou £44,000 a year for their child, now 12.

An earlier order, made on May 28, 2019, required him to pay Ms. Morrell £36,000 a year for their son, now eight, with annual increases tied to the Consumer Prices Index.

Payments under the Antoniou order ran from July 2020 until September 2021, after which Morgan continued paying some maintenance at a significantly lower rate.

The appeals arose from conflicting lower court decisions.

In July 2025, a deputy district judge refused Morgan's bid to dismiss Ms. Antoniou's enforcement application, holding her top-up order remained in force.

In December 2025, a different judge dismissed Ms. Morrell's enforcement claim, "apparently unaware" that the opposite conclusion had been reached in respect of Morgan's other child, Lady Justice King noted.

The legal question was whether each CMS review, revision or supersession creates a fresh maintenance calculation — which, under the Child Support Act 1991 and 1992 regulations, would cause an existing court-ordered "top-up" to "cease to have effect."

Lady Justice King concluded there is "one single maintenance calculation" that continues until prescribed events, such as a child ceasing to qualify or a parent dying, bring it to an end.

The contrary reading, she said, "could only be regarded as absurd and wholly contrary to the policy imperative which underpins the CSA 1991, resulting, as it invariably would, in recurring litigation, expense and uncertainty."

On Morgan's argument, every top-up order ever made would lapse every 12 months at the CMS annual review — a consequence his own barrister called the "seeds of its own destruction."

The judge illustrated the absurdity with a fresh top-up order Ms. Antoniou obtained in June 2026.

On Morgan's case, it would have ceased to have effect on August 31, 2026 — weeks after it was made — when his elder child by his wife turned 18 and stopped qualifying for child benefit.

Ms. Antoniou's CMS payment would rise by about £6 a week while she lost more than £25,000 a year in top-up maintenance, "without any reference back to the court."

Lady Justice King also said only a court can end a court order, noting that CMS calculations are performed by computer under section 50A of the Act.

"It would be unconstitutional for the Secretary of State, through secondary legislation, to confer that power upon an administrative decision-making process operated by a computer programme," she wrote.

Top-up orders exist because the statutory formula ignores income above £3,000 gross a week; section 8(6) lets courts order extra maintenance where the paying parent earns more.

The judgment traced the system to Margaret Thatcher's 1990 declaration that "parenthood is for life" and her criticism of court-based arrangements as "too inconsistent, too slow and too complicated."

Lady Justice King called it "unfortunate" that courts and tribunals had been involved for over seven years "to secure an outcome which will ensure that the father honours his obligations to these two children."

Should that not be the outcome, the two cases will be sent back to the Central Family Court for directions.