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Child Maintenance through the Child Support Agency

Where parents of a child are not living together, whether they are married, divorced, had their same-sex civil partnership dissolved, cohabited or never lived together, the question of maintenance arises. Children are expensive (“Lifetime cost of bringing up child £186,000 - and rising” The Guardian, 7 December 2007).

If both parents live in the UK the court does not have power to deal with basic child maintenance (but can deal with other financial provision for children including maintenance to cover school fees). Instead the Child Support Agency (CSA, which is part of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, or C-MEC) will make an assessment. If you agree to a maintenance figure, the court can approve the agreement in an order. However, either parent could still go to the CSA once the order is one year old. If there is no order, either parent can apply to the CSA at any time.

If one of you lives abroad, the court can deal with child maintenance and the CSA cannot make an assessment unless the payer works for the UK government or a company with headquarters in the UK.

Below you will find answers to the following questions:

Who counts as a child or a parent?
What if we agree on maintenance?
Will I lose my benefits if I get child maintenance?
How is child maintenance calculated?
Are special circumstances taken into account?
What about CSA assessments made before March 2003?
What about the future of the CSA?
Where can I get further information?

Child and Parent

Someone is a child for the CSA if they are under 16 or under 19 and in full-time education doing a course up to A-level or equivalent.

Someone is a parent of a child for the CSA only if they are the mother or father of the child. This includes adoptive parents and parents with parental orders after surrogacy, but not step-parents, whether they are or were married or civil partners of the other parent. However, step-parents who are or were married or civil partners of the parent with whom the child lives may be ordered by a court to pay maintenance if the child was treated as a child of the family.

Someone who has a child living with them, but who are not the child’s parent, may also be able to apply to the CSA.

Agreements

If you agree your maintenance payments between you, the court can approve the agreement in an order. However, under current legislation either parent could still go to the CSA once the order is one year old. In most divorce cases where an agreement is reached through mediation, collaborative law or negotiation, child maintenance is included in a consent order that the court approves as part of an overall settlement.

Welfare Benefits

A parent with care who gets Income Support or income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance can keep up to £10 each week of any child maintenance paid. The rest is deducted pound-for-pound from the welfare benefits. This is supposed to be an incentive for such parents to make an application to the CSA. However, they will be required to do so in any event, which means that even if there is an agreement about maintenance payments, but no order that is less than a year old, the CSA will still get involved. If you are in this situation, you should obtain detailed benefits advice, e.g. from a Citizens’ Advice Bureau.

Calculation

Under the CSA rules the parent who gets the child benefit from the government (the “parent with care”) can make an application to the CSA for maintenance against the other parent (the “non-resident parent”).

The basic assessment is based on a percentage of the payer’s net income (after tax, National Insurance Contributions and pension contributions) at 15%, 20% or 25% for 1, 2 or 3 or more children respectively (“basic rate”).

The assessment is made on weekly figures (12/52 – months/weeks – of monthly figures, about 23%, not ¼). The following other main provisions apply:

The maximum net income the CSA works on is £2,000 per week. If the non-resident parent has income above that the other parent can apply for top-up maintenance to the court once the CSA has made an assessment.
Students, children (under 16), prisoners, people with an income of less than £5 per week and people living in a care home and getting help with the fees and do not pay at all (“nil rate”).
If the net weekly income is under £100 or they or their partner are getting certain welfare benefits, child maintenance is £5 (“flat rate”).
If the net weekly income is between £100 and under £200, the child maintenance is £5 plus 25%, 35% or 45% of the income over £100 (for 1, 2 or 3 or more children respectively) (“reduced rate”). So if the net weekly income is £160, the child maintenance for 2 children is £5+£60x20%=£17.
If the payer has a child or children living with him, you first deduct 15%, 20% or 25% (for 1, 2 or 3 or more children) from his net income and then use that figure to work out the child maintenance payable for the other children (e.g. if the net income is £500 and there is 1 child from a new partner living with the payer, the income is reduced to: £500-15%x£500=£425; so that child maintenance for 2 children would be 20% of £425=£85 instead of £100).
If a payer has to pay child maintenance for children living with different parents, the CSA will work out the total child maintenance and then divide it by the number of children to allocate it between the maintenance recipients.
If the child or children spend overnight contact with the payer of more than 52 nights a year, the child maintenance is reduced by 1/7 for any full set of 52 nights the children spend with him each year.
The problem is that if the child spends equal time with each parent (182 nights a year), whoever happens to get the child benefit from the government will be entitled to child maintenance reduced by 3/7, i.e. to 57% of the total. This is the case even if the maintenance recipient is the higher earner.
If the non-resident parent refuses to provide information, the CSA makes a default maintenance decision of £30, £40 or £50 a week for 1, 2 or 3 or more children.
If the non-resident parent is self-employed the net income is worked out similar to the way it is worked out for income tax purposes, but capital expenditure or business entertainment expenses are not deductible.

Variation

Variations are rare because the CSA system was set up to deal with simple calculations (and they do not even manage to get those right or done in time).

If you are the non-resident parent you may be able to apply for a variation amongst other things on the following grounds:

high expenses surrounding contact (e.g. long-distance travel),
disabled children living with you,
debts that were taken out for the family before separation,
boarding school fees for the child who you are paying maintenance for (but only the boarding element of it and not the school fees),
mortgage payments for the child’s home if this was your shared home, but not if you also own the place, or
some issues in connection with capital settlements made before the CSA existed (i.e. made before 5 April 1993).

Your own debts other than those listed above or your own mortgage for your home do not count.

If you are the parent with care you may apply for variation amongst other things if the non-resident parent:

has assets other than his home worth £65,000 after deducting any mortgage,
has certain other income and is are paying the flat or nil rate,
controls his income (e.g. as a company director),
diverts all or part of his income to someone else, or
seems to have a way of life that he would not have on the income on which the calculation is based.

Old Cases

The rules of calculating CSA child maintenance set out here apply to current cases, not to cases were an application to the CSA was made before March 2003.

Future

The CSA has been plagued by problems with their IT system and have generally provided a poor service (see e.g. SocietyGuardian.co.uk “Timeline: the Child Support Agency Crisis” ). The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 provides that the CSA has been taken over by a new body, the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC). The calculation will also eventually change. The changes are going to be phased in over a 6-year period.

Further Information

For more information, please see the CSA website www.csa.gov.uk and in particular the leaflet “How is child maintenance worked out?”

or call the CSA National Helpline from 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays on 08457 133 133 (textphone 08457 138 924).

You can use the CSA’s online calculator to work out how much you would receive or pay.

For advice on your specific circumstances contact Alternative Family Law: ring or email us.

April 2009

Alternative Family Law

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