Mother of 16 children on £600 a week in benefits boasts she gets too much... but that won't stop baby No 17 (by sixth father) 2011

For her the benefits system is ‘a joke’ – yet others might not find Kathy Black’s situation a laughing matter.
The unemployed mother – said to be pregnant with her 17th child by a sixth father – lives rent-free in a council house worth £135,000.
In total, she receives more than £600 every week in benefits, equivalent to the take-home pay of a worker earning £42,000 a year.

Drain on the state: Kathy Black claims £600 a week in benefits to take care for some of her 16 children. She is seen here with the children she had with her second husband, Gary Black

Drain on the state: Kathy Black claims £600 a week in benefits to take care of some of her 16 children. She is seen here with the children she had with her second husband, Gary Black

And the 45-year-old, whose oldest child is 28 and youngest is one, also banks thousands of pounds in maintenance each year from one of her ex-partners without it affecting her state income.
Yesterday, unrepentant about her lifestyle, she boasted that the benefits system showered her with ‘too much’ money.
‘If my ex earns £3,000 a month and I get £1,000 in maintenance the authorities don’t take any of that money into account and I still get my child benefit, so in a way they pay me too much,’ she admitted.

A recent picture of (l to r) Patrick, Jade, Orry, Teresa and Danny - the children she had with her second husband. Mrs Black also receives thousands of pounds in maintenance each year from one of her ex-partners, Tony Blackburn - without any penalty against her state income

‘The benefits system is just wrong. It’s a joke. I will go to work when my children are old enough but at the moment it will cost the state more to put them in childcare while I go to work.’
But Mrs Black – who had her first baby at 17 – has been criticised by two of her children, saying they rarely saw any of the benefit money and were often left to fend for themselves.

AN EX-HUSBAND'S VIEW

Kathy Black’s second husband, Gary Black, claimed his ex-wife was obsessed with babies and said he had heard she was expecting her 17th.
‘I decided I only wanted five children and I had a vasectomy. It’s terrible she’s gone on to have child after child. I think she’s got some kind of problem,’ he said.
‘She loves them when they are babies and infants but as soon as they grow up she doesn’t want to know. It’s a cycle - when they get too old she gets pregnant again.
‘She said she would go to work when her children are old enough but she’ll be ready to retire by then. She’ll keep having children until she dies giving birth or can’t have any more.’
He also said his former wife regularly cheated on him when they were together, went out drinking at night and was abusive to him and their children, leading him to attempt suicide at one point.
‘The first three years of our marriage were sweet but when Pat was born she started drinking and having sex with other people,’ railway worker Mr Black added.
‘I would come in from work, she’d pick up the keys and head out drinking and then get in just before I went to work at 6am.’
He admitted being violent towards her but insisted it happened only on one occasion when he ‘lashed out’ after seeing her hurt one of their sons.
‘She’s the violent one,’ he claimed. ‘She used to lock the children in cupboards, put pillows over their faces and thump them.’

Family members, who claim she is pregnant again, also said the mother receives £100-a-week in child benefit, with the rest of her money from a variety of handouts including either income support or child tax credits and housing benefit.
Her son, Orry, 17, said: ‘When I was there, there were ten of us in the house. Once, she did the weekly shop and just came back with five crates of beer.
‘Most of the time she would just buy huge bags of pasta and some sauce and we’d live on that.’
Daughter Teresa, 22, said: ‘I don’t know what she spent the money on because all our clothes were hand- me-downs.
‘In Year Seven, I was out of school for 72 days babysitting my brothers and sisters. We were left to do everything ourselves.’
Mrs Black, who lives with her seven youngest offspring in East Hanningfield, near Chelmsford, Essex, refused the opportunity to deny their claims yesterday.
She says she had to walk out on her older children because she was unable to stay with their ‘violent’ fathers, but insisted she had no regrets about falling pregnant so often.
‘I didn’t want to have abortions,’ she said. ‘Some of my friends are unlucky enough that they only get one child. I think it is a blessing that I’ve had so many children.’
But she came under further criticism from her second husband, Gary Black, Orry and Teresa’s father and a former rail worker of Canvey Island, Essex.
Mr Black, 49, said: ‘If she’s not Britain’s worst mum she must be a close second.
‘She’s hardly done a day’s work in her life and has claimed benefits as long as I can remember.’
Last night, the Department for Work and Pensions confirmed child maintenance payments were ‘disregarded when calculating certain benefits’ but added that a benefits cap of £26,000 a year – or £500 a week – is being introduced in 2013.