Hi Runnerbeans
Thank you for your post. I am William the
child maintenance Options consultant. I will provide some information that may help answer your query.
If you wanted to use the statutory rules, 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. When a child leaves full-time education in the summer, Child Benefit generally continues until the first week of September. Also, anyone aged 16 or 17 who is not in education, is not working and does not receive employment related benefits, is also defined as a child. You can find more information on when child maintenance stops on Gov.uk at
www.gov.uk/when-child-maintenance-payments-stop. .
If your partner has a family-based arrangement in place with his wife, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, they both of the freedom to decide the terms of their own arrangement, such as how much child maintenance will be paid with the older child now living with you.
A family-based arrangement can include money and other kinds of support, such as your partner directly paying for things that his child may need. Even though family-based arrangement are not legally-binding, many parents prefer them because of their flexibility and how easy the arrangement can be reviewed, such as if your partner or his wife’s circumstances change. You can find more information on family-based arrangements on our website at
www.cmoptions.org/en/family/index.asp.
To help your partner renegotiate his family-based arrangement we have an online calculator on our website (
www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/). This tool will give your partner an indication of how much child maintenance that may be calculated if you were to use the Child Maintenance Service.
We also have a range of tools and guides that he may find useful (
www.cmoptions.org/en/toolbox/index.asp). We have a discussion guide which your partner can use to help in plan his conversations around child maintenance. We also have a family-based arrangement form that is not a legally-binding document, but if used to write down what both your partner and his wife have agreed, it can help to formalise their arrangement.
If child maintenance has been set up via the Child Support Agency (CSA) or the Child Maintenance Service, your partner may wish to contact them directly to inform them of a change in circumstances. He can find their contact details on any letters that he may have received or for the CSA, via Gov.uk at
www.gov.uk/child-maintenance/contact.
Where child maintenance has been agreed via the courts in the form of a
Consent Order or Minute of Agreement (if you live in Scotland), your partner may wish to seek legal advice to find out how his arrangement may be affected by his son.
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
