Eligibility for Child Benefit v Child Maintenance

Hello OrlandoBelle

Thank you for your post. I will provide relevant information which will help to answer your query.

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. The definition of full-time education is more than 12 hours a week of study. When a child leaves full-time education in the summer, Child Benefit generally continues until the first week of September. You can find more information on this topic by visiting Gov.uk at www.gov.uk/when-child-maintenance-payments-stop

When child maintenance finishes is dependant on the type of agreement that you have in place. If you and your daughter''s other parent set up child maintenance via what is called a family-based arrangement, there are no strict rules that both of you need to stick to. Therefore, you and your daughter''s other parent have the freedom to decide when you will stop paying child maintenance to the other parent. This flexibility is derived from a family-based arrangement not being legally-binding, however, it''s often considered to be the most flexible way of maintaining an arrangement.

Where child maintenance has been set up using either the Child Support Agency (CSA) or the Child Maintenance Service, you will need to contact the organisation that is managing your child maintenance to find out when your payments will cease.

If you and your daughter''s other parent arranged child maintenance via the courts, you will need to check on the terms of your agreement to clarify when you can stop paying the other parent for your daughter. To do this, you may wish to seek legal advice.

To discuss the ways that child maintenance can be arranged in a personalised and impartial manner, you may wish to contact Child Maintenance Options directly. Their contact details can be found on their website at www.cmoptions.org

The DWP have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful. It offers help and support to separating and separated families. The link is: www.wikivorce.com/divorce/Sorting-Out-Separation.html

Kind regards

William

Hello OrlandoBelle

Sorry for your confusion, I will try to elaborate.

In your original post you asked if there was any correlation between child maintenance eligibility and Government help, by which I am assuming you mean benefits.

The answer is, yes. That is because child maintenance payments run in line with Child Benefit payments. Generally speaking, if a child is still eligible for Child Benefit, they will still be eligible for maintenance payments.

For your daughter to be eligible for Child Benefit, and therefore child maintenance, she must be completing at least 12 hours per week of education not higher than A-level standard, or equivalent.

You can check the eligibility rules by following the following links, www.gov.uk/child-benefit/eligibility, www.gov.uk/when-child-maintenance-payments-stop.

Please note that all the information I have provided is based on the Government’s statutory maintenance rules. This is just one possible way to set up maintenance payments. Some parents set up their own agreements without involving the Government or legal system. These are known as family-based arrangement and where this type of arrangement is in place, there are no rules to follow at all. This arrangement consists of anything that the parents can agree to, therefore the statutory rules are not relevant, unless used as guidance of course.

If you would like further information about the options and to receive a more personalised service, you can contact Child Maintenance Options directly, www.cmoptions.org.

Regards

William