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Child Maintenance as per Consent Order

Fiona
Platinum Member

24 Mar 14 #427091 by Fiona

Reply from Fiona

A child over 18 in education or training can apply for child maintenance (periodical payments) in their own right under Schedule 1 Children Act 1989. However as I said above there is a bar to over 18 year olds applying if there was already an order for child maintenance for their benefit in place immediately before they reach the age of 16. See Paragraph 2(3) Schedule 1 Children Act 1989;

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/schedule/1

As the order was made before March 2003 no application can be made to the CSA so the order remains in effect. If your children go to university one option would be to negotiate with your ex and agree the payments go directly to your children.

Another option would be to apply to court to enforce any arrears of child maintenance paid to you if your ex stops payment and see how the judge interprets the order. The problem with this is if the judge interprets the order to end when the child finishes secondary education the order will have ended and applying to extend the order could be problematic. It may be better to apply to extend the order before the child reaches 18 years of age.

Child Maintenance Options
Moderator

09 Apr 14 #429395 by Child Maintenance Options

Reply from Child Maintenance Options

Hi Millie73

Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will try and provide some information that may help answer your query.

As Fiona and the other members have stated, with you having a Consent Order in place for child maintenance, you will need to seek legal advice to clarify what is defined as full-time education for your arrangement.

Under the statutory rules that are used by the Child Maintenance Service, 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. You can find more information on the statutory rules on Gov.uk at www.gov.uk/when-child-maintenance-payments-stop.

Fiona has also mentioned a family-based arrangement. With this type of agreement, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, both you and your ex-partner have the freedom to decide when your child maintenance will stop. Family-based arrangements can include both money and other kinds of support, such as your ex-partner directly paying for things that your child may need. Although family-based arrangements are not legally-binding, many parents find that they are very flexible and can easily be reviewed, such as if you or your ex-partner’s circumstances change. You can find more information on family-based arrangements on our website at www.cmoptions.org/en/family/index.asp.

For more information on the ways to set up child maintenance, please visit our website at www.cmoptions.org. Alternatively, you can call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on a Saturday.

Regards

William

Moderators: wikivorce team, rubytuesday, dukey, hadenoughnow, Tets, Shezi, Linda Sheridan, Forseti, Mitchum, WhiteRose, Lostboy67, WYSPECIAL, Bubblegum11

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