Hello tk1
Thank you for your post. I am William, the
child maintenance Options consultant. I can give you some information about child maintenance that may help you.
You asked if you are expected to pay child maintenance if you are still married. All parents have a responsibility to provide regular and reliable financial support for their child, regardless of whether they are married, and we are here to help people choose the best way to do this.
If an application was made to the Child Support Agency (CSA), your responsibility to pay child maintenance will start from around the time you contact the CSA or they contact you. Therefore, you would not be responsible to pay back payments from when you separated.
If your child maintenance is arranged through the courts as a
Consent Order and you would like to find out whether the court will back date payments, you may wish to seek legal advice or you could discuss this with the solicitor dealing with your divorce. You can find further information about legal advice at
www.gov.uk.
Many parents choose to arrange child maintenance through a family-based arrangement and this can be done between you and your wife or with the help of a friend, family member or professional mediator. A family-based arrangement is not legally enforceable but it is flexible so you can both agree how much maintenance will be paid and when this will start from. It can also include other kinds of support such as buying clothing or helping with mortgage payments.
To give you an indication of how much child maintenance the CSA may work out, there is an online calculator on our website at
www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/calculator.asp. You may wish to use this figure as a starting point in your negotiations with your wife if you were to set up a family-based arrangement.
To help you to make a family-based arrangement, we have got a number of guides that you may find useful on our website at
www.cmoptions.org.
If a family-based arrangement does not work for you, you still have other options. You have the option of using the CSA and they have two schemes available, one is called Direct Pay and the other is called Collect and Pay. Direct Pay is where the CSA calculates child maintenance and then lets you and your wife decide how payments will be made. Once they have calculated the maintenance amount, the CSA will not contact you or your wife again unless your circumstances change or if they are told that payments have been missed.
The Collect and Pay service is where the CSA calculates, collects and enforces payments on your behalf, as some people prefer the security and help of third party involvement.
The CSA works out child maintenance payments using a set formula, which would be based on your income. Other factors are taken into account including the number of children that need child maintenance, and if you live with any other children. In some circumstances, the CSA can also take into account mortgage payments made in respect of the home that is lived in by your wife and daughter. You can find further information about other factors that can be taken into account by the CSA at
www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/...lasset/dg_198849.pdf.
If you have got any questions about the CSA, or if you would like to set up maintenance using their service, you can contact them directly. You can find their contact details and information about how they work out child maintenance online at
www.gov.uk/childmaintenance.
If you feel that none of these options are suitable for you, you may wish to consider a Consent Order, which is an official ruling made by a court. This is usually put in place when parents are going to court for other reasons, such as arranging a divorce or dividing their property or other assets. To arrange a Consent Order, both parents need to agree how much child maintenance will be paid and how often before going to court and there may be legal fees associated with this.
We have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful, it offers help and support to separated families. You can find this at
www.wikivorce.com/divorce/Sorting-Out-Separation.html.
If you would like to talk to our team in complete confidence about child maintenance you could give us a ring on 0800 988 0988. We also have some other useful tools on our website to help support separated parents.
