CHILD MAINTENANCE: THE OPTIONS

You have three options when it comes to child maintenance (not including the separation of the family assets as part of the divorce settlement, which is a one-off financial agreement but covers ongoing child maintenance).

The options are:

• court order for periodic payments;
• CSA;
• a voluntary agreement with your ex-partner.

There are major differences between each option, and you need to consider which will be the best deal for you. This is not only in the short term – child maintenance is due until around when a child is 19 so the long term must also be considered.

It may not be a choice that you get to make as your ex-partner also has a right to decide which route to go down, and the choice may be made for you. In which case you need to learn quickly what is in store.

A recent study by the DfCA revealed that:

Over half (56 per cent of both samples) of all maintenance agreements were made informally between the child’s parents. Around three in ten maintenance agreements were made through the Child Support Agency (28 per cent of children in the resident parent sample and 30 per cent of children in the non-resident parent sample for whom maintenance was paid). Slightly more than an eighth of each sample had their maintenance agreements madethrough a lawyer or a court (14 per cent of children in the resident parent sample and 13 per cent of children in the non-resident parent sample for whom maintenance was paid). One per cent of children in each sample had had the maintenance payments made by their non-resident parent agreed through the Family Mediation Service.

What this study shows is that there is a need for almost one in two divorced couples to have the children’s ongoing financial arrangements decided on by a third party (CSA, court or other). Only about half of parents can agree it between themselves.