Divorce Guide

Enforcing Child Support

Enforcing Child Support is an important role of the Government. Thousands of cases are brought every year in UK Family Courts where the child support has never been received, or completely stopped after a period of time. The court considers child support a very sensitive issue as it affects the future of children.

What is Child Support?

When couples with children get divorced one of them gets the custody of the child. This means that maximum number of days in a year the child will reside with the custodial parent. All the basic needs of children are taken care of by the custodial parent as they live in the same house.

The non custodial parent gets other rights like visitation, parental responsibility, contact orders, and so on. The other most important responsibility that the non custodial parent has to fulfill is that of sharing the financial responsibility of the child. The concept of Child Support has been introduced so that even after divorce both the parents equally contribute to the financial needs of the child.

Child Support can be defined as a payment made by the non custodial parent to the custodial payment as a contribution to the childcare cost. The Child Support is required to be paid till the child is 18 years of age unless otherwise specified in the divorce decree.

Most of the parents feel responsible for bringing up the children and readily contribute to the financial needs of the child after divorce. The best way to take decisions regarding Child Support is to sit together with your partner and reach a mutual agreement.

However, there are cases where parents are not ready to pay child maintenance and or avoid doing so. Thus enforcing child support is very important for Family Courts.

Here are a few Child Support violations that are quite common:

1. Denying to pay Child Support money
2. Sending Child maintenance on a irregular basis
3. Sending Child Support in inadequate amount
4. Stop paying Child Support after a while
5. Denying fatherhood to avoid paying Child Maintenance
6. Stop paying maintenance once the child started earning but has not turned 18.

For enforcing child support, the UK Government has come up with service agencies that can help public deal with child support issues. CSA (The Child Support Agency) is one of the prime agencies in this area.

If a case is brought to the notice of CSA it can take the following action against an individual in order to enforce child support:

1. Get the money deducted from his or her salary
2. Freeze money belonging to the non custodial parent
3. Pass the case to Bailiff who will sell off the property of the non custodial parent and return the money owed
4. If the non custodial parent is a State pension or a War pension, the agency can get the money deducted from the pension
5. Take the non residential parent to the court.

If the person provides wrong information the Court can charge him 1000 Pound as fine. The CSA also takes up the task of finding the whereabouts of the non custodial parents if they are missing. CSA does a good job when it comes to enforcing child support.

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