Making arrangements for child maintenance

Child maintenance is the money a parent pays towards their child’s upbringing and everyday living costs. All parents have a responsibility for supporting and raising their children financially. Child maintenance usually includes payment of regular amounts of money to the parent who cares for the child most of the time. Child maintenance can also include paying bills or buying items such as clothes and toys, as long as both parents agree.

A child maintenance arrangement is a financial agreement between parents regarding their child's everyday living costs. You must have a child maintenance arrangement if your child is under 16 or under 20 if they are in approved education or training.

Parents can set up a child maintenance arrangement between themselves without involving anyone else.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is a government service that can help parents set up a formal child maintenance arrangement. An application is required to start a formal child maintenance process through the CMS.

Introduction to Child Maintenance

If you're no longer living with your child's other parent, you'll need to think about child maintenance - this is essentially a financial arrangement that helps cover your child's everyday living costs.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is there to help you navigate this process and manage the payments if you need support. When you're arranging child maintenance, you're deciding how the paying parent will provide financial support to you (if you're the receiving parent), and these payments go towards covering your child's daily needs like food, clothing, and other expenses.

For child maintenance purposes, your child counts as anyone under 16, or under 20 if they're still in full-time non-advanced education or meet certain other criteria.

You've got different options when it comes to arranging this - you can sort out a private agreement between yourselves, or you can get the CMS involved to help manage things for you. The paying parent needs to keep up with regular child maintenance payments to make sure your child's needs are consistently met. Understanding what options you have and how the CMS works can really help you choose the best arrangement that'll work for your family's particular circumstances.

The amount you receive depends on how much your child’s other parent earns, how often the child stays over with them, and whether they have other children, or children living with them.

Types of Child Maintenance

When you're sorting out child maintenance, there are two different options to choose from that can work for your family's situation: a private arrangement, or getting the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) to manage things for you.

Private arrangement

A private arrangement is one agreed by you and your ex. You decide between yourselves how much child maintenance should be paid and how often.

This approach can be really flexible and tailored to fit your family's unique circumstances – many parents find it helpful to use the CMS calculation as a starting point to agree on what's fair and then go from there. Private arrangements tend to work best when you and your ex can communicate reasonably well and are both willing to stick to what you've agreed.

Parents can request a review of their child maintenance arrangement if circumstances change or if they disagree with a calculation.

If parents cannot agree on an amount for child maintenance, the CMS can calculate a child maintenance amount for them using rules set out by Child Support law.

The child maintenance service

Alternatively, you can bring in the Child Maintenance Service to help manage your arrangement. The CMS will crunch the numbers and calculate how much child maintenance should be paid based on the paying parent's income and other relevant factors.

With their Direct Pay option, the CMS works out the payment amount for you, but you handle the actual payments directly between yourselves – this way you avoid any collection fees.

If you need more support, the CMS can also collect and transfer the payments on your behalf, though this may involve additional costs that you'll want to factor in. Choosing the right option really depends on your personal circumstances – things like your income levels, how much care each parent provides, and how well you can work together. The Child Maintenance Service offers plenty of guidance to help you navigate your arrangements and find the best solution that works for your child's needs and your family situation.

Child maintenance should be paid for the following children:

• A child under 16.
• A child under 20 in full-time non-advanced education (e.g. A-levels or equivalent).
• A child of 16 or 17 who has left full-time education but has registered for work or training with a careers service.

A parent has a duty to pay child maintenance whether or not they see their child.

Help deciding which option to choose

Everyone’s circumstances are different so you will need to decide what is best for your family.

We can help, with our Separating with Children service.