[Solved] Child Manitenance

Hi Geoff

The only advice I can give is to phone the Child Maintenance Service and discuss with them your situation,they are great to talk to but that's only my opinion,i had no issues with them at all,all the best.

Hi there

I've moved this thread into the Child Maintenance section...it might get more of a response here.

I'd have a word with the CMS - from what you have said, I have the feeling that you should be paying the flat rate (£5 per week under CSA, £7 per week under CMS) but you need to check that for certain so that you don't get into arrears.

Hi Geoff1145

Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will provide some information that may help answer query.

You may wish to know that the Child Support Agency (CSA) are no longer accepting new child maintenance applications. These are now being managed by the Child Maintenance Service

The statutory child maintenance services (the Child Support Agency (CSA) and the Child Maintenance Service) have a number of different child maintenance rates depending on the paying parent’s income. A paying parent may be placed in a flat rate of child maintenance if they are receiving State Pension. The Flat rate is where the paying parent pays up to £5 per week (for CSA arrangements) and up to £7 per week for cases with the Child Maintenance Service. You can find more information on how child maintenance is calculated on Gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-worked-out/overview. If you have a case in place with either the CSA or the Child Maintenance Service, you may wish to clarify your query with the organisation that is managing your child maintenance. You can find the respective contact details on any letters that you may have received, or for the CSA on Gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/child-maintenance/contact.

However, if you and the other parent have agreed child maintenance privately, via a family-based arrangement, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, both you and the other parent have the freedom to decide the terms of your own arrangement, such as how your child maintenance will be calculated. This is because a family-based arrangement is not legally-binding and there is no involvement from the courts or the statutory child maintenance services.

A family-based arrangement does not always need to be about money, although many parents do include regular financial contributions. Your arrangement could include other kinds of support, such as you directly paying for things that your child or children may need.

To give you an indication of how much child maintenance that may be calculated if you were to use the Child Maintenance Service, we have an online calculator on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/. Some parents use the figure provided when negotiating child maintenance for their family-based arrangement.

If you and the other parent have agreed child maintenance via the courts in the form of a Consent Order or Minute of Agreement (for parents that live in Scotland), you may wish to review the terms and conditions of your arrangement to see what was agreed on how your child maintenance is calculated. To do this, you may wish to seek legal advice.

It is possible to change the terms of your Consent Order but to do this you will need to get legal advice. This usually results in going back to court to set out the application on a standard form. The court will then consider any changes.

Any Consent Orders that were endorsed after March 2003 are not legally subject to change unless they have been in place for at least 12 months. After 12 months, either parent can apply to the Child Maintenance Service and the Consent Order will no longer be valid. However, if a Consent Order dates back to before March 2003, then law does not allow parents to change over to the Child Maintenance Service. Only the courts can arrange child maintenance in such circumstances.

For more information on the ways to set up child maintenance, please visit our website at http://www.cmoptions.org. Alternatively, you can call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on a Saturday. We have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful. It offers help and support to separating and separated families. The link is: www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation.

Regards

William