Hello Tata77
Thank you for your post. I am Sarah, the Child Maintenance Options consultant.
There are a number of ways you can arrange child maintenance with your soon to be ex-husband. Many parents choose to arrange child maintenance through a family-based arrangement, which is simply an agreement between you both. A family-based arrangement is not legally enforceable but it is flexible so you can both agree how much maintenance will be paid and how often. As there are no strict rules to follow you can also include other kinds of support such as helping with nursery payments.
To give you an indication of how much child maintenance the Child Support Agency (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 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. The CSA has 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 soon to be ex-husband decide how payments will be made. Once they have calculated the maintenance amount, the CSA will not contact either of you 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. If you decide to use the CSA, then responsibility to pay child maintenance will start from around the time your soon to be ex-husband is contacted by them.
You said that your soon to be ex-husband pays maintenance for his son from his first marriage. When a paying parent pays maintenance for more than one child, the CSA will work out the total amount payable for all children involved. This is then divided equally so that the same amount is paid for each child. Your soon to be ex-husband can then choose to pay the maintenance direct to the CSA and they will pass this on to the receiving parent. Alternatively, he can pay each of you directly.
Sometimes, a paying parent may pay child maintenance for more than one child, both through the CSA and via a family-based arrangement. In this situation the CSA would not be able to take into account any maintenance that is being paid through a family-based arrangement, although any court orders covering child maintenance can be taken into account.
If an arrangement was made through the CSA, your soon to be ex-husband would be legally responsible only for the amount worked out by them, and he is not obliged to pay for anything extra, such as nursery fees.
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 if you are going to court for other reasons, such as arranging a divorce or dividing your property or other assets. To arrange a Consent Order, both of you 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.
If you would like to check whether you are entitled to any financial help with nursery payments for your daughter, you can find further information about benefits and work entitlements at
www.gov.uk.
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 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on Saturday. We also have some other useful tools on our website to help support separated parents.
