Child maintenance

Child maintenance (or child support) is a regular, reliable payment to help cover a child’s everyday living costs. There are different ways to arrange child maintenance and it’s up to you to choose the one that best suits your circumstances.

illustration for Child maintenance

The government has set out a formula to help parents work out how child maintenance should be paid. Their online child maintenance calculator tool is a useful resource but does not deal with tricky situations - when you'll need specialist advice - but it does provide a useful benchmark. 

There are three options for arranging child maintenance with your ex:

  • A family based arrangement - you and your ex can make any arrangement you like for child maintenance provided you both agree. However, it will not be legally binding.
  • The Child Maintenance Service (or CMS, which used to be called the CSA)  - the government-run CMS can calculate child maintenance for you and your ex if you can't agree the amount yourselves and can also do the administration around the payments by collecting them and paying them over if required.
  • Court - not only can court orders be used to turn voluntarily agreed arrangements into legally binding ones but the court can also deal with more complicated or unusual situations for example where the paying parent has a very high level of income, where school fees need to be paid and where either parent or the child lives abroad. 

The interaction between child maintenance and other financial arrangements such as spousal maintenance can be tricky and it's important to get advice on the overall picture.

Our experience in child maintenance law 

As experts in the full range of financial orders on divorce, we have guided clients from all walks of life through this highly technical area of law: 

  • helping parents to negotiate and agree family based arrangements (including through mediation or collaborative law) tailored to their family's circumstances
  • successfully obtaining "top up" maintenance orders in the court where the paying parent has a very high income
  • advising clients where parentage is disputed
  • successfully obtaining school fees orders
  • successfully challenging incorrect CMS calculations, including appearing before the Child Support Tribunal
  • advising clients with complex or unusual income sources on their child maintenance obligations
  • regularly advising international families on their child maintenance obligations in England and Wales 

Ready to talk to us?

Our team of specialist family lawyers are here to support you if you're facing issues related to child maintenance. Speak to our team today. 

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Child maintenance FAQs

If you and your former partner cannot agree on the level of child support it will be calculated by reference to the specific formula in the child support legislation. For this reason most parents use that formula as the basis for making their own arrangements and the majority of the people we advise are able to reach agreement without having to go to the CMS. 

The formula has an earnings cap currently set at £3,000 per week before deductions which means the maximum weekly payment for one child is £294 (£1,274 per month), for two children £392 (£1,698 pm) and three children £452 (£1,958). This is before any deduction for the time children spend overnight with the paying parent or allowances for any other children the payer has living with them.

Child maintenance through the CMS is paid until a child reaches the age of 16 or as long as they're under 20 until they finish A-levels or equivalent. 

If you make your own arrangements or there is a court order the payments may continue into further education.

Child support payments are intended to provide a contribution to the general expenses of looking after a child. However, the CMS formula is fixed rather than reflecting the actual expenses of each family, and the practical reality is that the boundaries between what a child needs specifically and the costs of the parents looking after them are blurred. This is why child maintenance has to be looked at as part of the wider financial picture. 

There are some circumstances in which child maintenance can be backdated through the CMS, but in most cases it can't. There are other options that can be considered if this is an issue.

You and your ex can arrange this if you think it is the best approach and it's often done for children at University. It can't generally be done for other children unless both parents agree. 

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