Hi john p
I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I understand you have an agreement in place for child maintenance which was made under the terms of your divorce settlement. You would like clarification on when your payments will end for your sons in reference to full-time education.
Under child support legislation, regular child maintenance payments must be made until a child is 16 years old, or 20 if they are in full-time, non-advanced education (A-level or equivalent), or for as long as Child Benefit is being paid. When a child leaves full-time education in the summer, Child Benefit generally continues until the first week of September.
The definition of full-time education is more than 12 hours a week of study, on a course up to and including A level standard. Some examples of non-advanced education are:
GCSEs
A levels
iGCSEs
Pre-U
International Baccalaureate
NVQ/SVQ level 1, 2 or 3
BTEC National Diploma, National Certificate and First Diploma
SCE higher grade or similar
If the child were in advanced or higher education, they would no longer qualify for child maintenance. Some examples of advanced and higher education are:
a degree
Diploma of Higher Education
NVQ level 4 or above
BTEC Higher National Certificate (HNC)
teacher training
Therefore, under the Government''s statutory service''s guidelines, your payments, respectively for each son, stop when he leaves full-time non-advanced education and Child Benefit payment for him has stopped, unless he became 20 years old first. If one of your sons no longer qualified for child maintenance under these rules, while the other did, the amount you pay would be recalculated based on this change in circumstance. You can find out more about the statutory service and how child maintenance is arranged by them, on the Government website Gov.uk using the following link,
www.gov.uk/child-maintenance.
For a specific explanation as to when your responsibility to pay child maintenance will end (as written in your divorce settlement) you will need to seek expert legal advice. You may wish to liaise with the solicitor that started the initial proceedings. Alternatively, Gov.uk has a service which may help you to find a legal advisor or solicitor in your area. You can find this at
www.gov.uk/find-a-legal-adviser.
You may also like to contact the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB). They provide free information and advice on topics such as legal, housing and debt. Their website address is
www.adviceguide.org.uk/index.htm.
For information about all of the options available to set up a Child Maintenance Arrangement, and for access to useful tools and guides, please visit our website at
cmoptions.org. If you would prefer a confidential chat with one of our team, you can phone us on 0800 988 0988, which is free from a landline. We also have other information about separation that you may find useful on our website.
Hope this helps.
