Child Support Ending

Hi, I have one child that is about to go to university and another still at school. I have a court order for maintenance but it doesn't state when it ends or the division between my 2 kids. Is it split 50/50? if so does my youngest receive 50% until higher ed?

It depends on the wording in your order. Having said that - court orders for child maintenance often have a lack of clarity in the wording.

The end date for the payments for each child ought to be stated - along the lines of payment until the child finished secondary education, or tertiary or until a certain age / birthday.

In the absence of a clearly stated end point - then you would fall back on the general rules used by the Child Maintenance Service (CSA) - the default end date is their 19th Birthday (if they are still at school or college).

In simple terms - it covers children at school and those at sixth form college (A levels and BTECs) but stops when the start University.

So you should now only be paying for the younger child.

The court order does not stipulate the amount you should pay.

You can try and get away with starting to pay 50%.

However if the recipient disputes the reduced payments then the case will go to the CMS (not back to court) and they will calculate payments afresh using their calculator which you can easily find online.

Under the CMS formula it is not normally a 50/50 spilt - you can try this out on their calculator.

Thank you.
I am the recipient not the payer. I can not fathom why child maintenance is not equally divided between children, why is one cheaper than the other? Is this even ethical?

Sorry for assuming wrongly that you were the payer - everything I said still applies.

Surely the fact that it is not divided equally works in your favour. Because rather than receiving half of the previous payment when the oldest child goes to Uni - you will receive perhaps approx 70% of the previous payment

I don't know the hard and fast reason for the way the formula works - but I suspect that the logic is that having one child carries a significant financial burden compared to being single - i.e. it limits to an extent the kind of job that you can have (e.g. you cannot work on an oil rig).

So part of the payment for the first child is to reflect this.

Once you add the second and third children there is extra cost for food/clothes etc

Really no need to apologise and many thanks for responding to me, you just provided me with a piece of this jigsaw that I have never understood.

This site has been incredibly helpful in my journey of divorce, leave to remove and now child maintenance ending. So thank you all very very much.