Divorce Guide

How is Child Maintenance Determined

All the divorcing couples with children must know as to how is the child maintenance determined. Divorce ends the marriage and also separates the financial liability and rights of the couple. The law ensures that whomever the child stays with, both the parents bear his financial liability.

By giving Visitation Rights, Residence Order, Child Custody, and Contact Orders, the Family Court ensures that both parents enjoy equal rights and responsibilities with regard to children. Similarly Child Maintenance is set to ensure that both parents financially contribute in bringing up the child as it is their joint responsibility.

Child Maintenance is regular, reliable, financial support that helps towards child’s everyday living costs. The parent who does not have day-to-day care of the child pays the resident parent a certain amount of money on a regular basis. In some cases the payer can also be a grandparent or guardian.

Since everyone is not capable of paying the same maintenance due to different financial backgrounds and other circumstances there is no fixed amount to be paid as the maintenance. The Family Court, considering a number of important factors gives the final words regarding the amount a non-residential parent should pay for maintenance.

Every separating couple with children must know that how is child maintenance determined. There are three ways one can arrange to pay or receive the maintenance:

1. Through CSA
2. Through Mutual Agreement
3. Through Family Court

CSA or Child Support Agency is the UK Government’s Child Maintenance service. It helps the couple decide the optimum amount of maintenance required to be paid in a particular course. CSA makes it legally binding for the nonresident parent to pay the decided amount on time otherwise takes the required legal action.

Other way is to decide the maintenance amount through mutual agreement. The couples can take the help of lawyer or accountant and calculate the right amount of child maintenance to be paid.

Here are the factors that CSA and Family Court takes into consideration while deciding the Child Maintenance:

1. The income of the resident and non-resident parent
2. Number of children maintenance has to be paid for
3. Number of nights, on average, the nonresident parent has the child for per year
4. Number of children living in nonresident parent’s household
5. Does the nonresident parent get any allowance like State Retirement Pension, Incapacity Benefit, Widowed Parent’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Training Allowance from Department of Work and Pensions, or any other such allowance
6. Does the resident parent get any income based jobseeker’s allowance

If the CSA is calculating the exact amount of the maintenance to be paid then it applies four basic rates criteria. The four basic rates are:

1. Basic rate (if they have an income of 200 pounds a week or more)
2. Reduced rate (if the income is more than 100 pounds but less than 200 a week)
3. Flat rate (if the income is between 5-100 pounds week
4. Nil rate (if the income is less than 5 pounds a week)

The above details are collected from both the parents and child maintenance is calculated on the basis of the details provided by them.

The parents working on their own might find it difficult to figure out how to determine the child maintenance. It is advisable to take professional help and expert’s advice.

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