Everything you need to know about child maintenance

Child maintenance covers how a child’s living costs are paid when one of the parents doesn’t live with that child.

Find out how child maintenance works, your options for making a child maintenance arrangement, how child maintenance is paid and answers to common questions.

A family of two parents and two children and a dog

What is child maintenance?

Child maintenance is paid by a parent who doesn’t carry out the main day-to-day care of a child. They pay that money to the parent or guardian who looks after the child most of the time to help cover the child’s everyday living costs. Child maintenance is often referred to as child support.

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Can I get child maintenance?

If you have a child who’s under 16, or under 20 and in approved education or training, you can get child maintenance providing:

you're the child’s main carer – this is usually a parent but in some cases is a grandparent or other guardian
the other parent doesn’t live with you as part of your family

Parent supermarket shopping with their child

Do I have to pay child maintenance?

You have to pay child maintenance if you:

are the child’s biological or adoptive parent
don't live with the child as part of the family
are the child’s legal parent

You may be exempt from paying child maintenance or qualify to pay a lower rate if:

your gross weekly income is less than £7
you're in prison
you're under 16
you're 16-19 and in approved training or education
you’re 16 or 17 and getting income support, income-based jobseeker’s allowance or income-related employment and support allowance (or you’re included in your partner’s claim for one of these benefits)
you’re in a care home or independent hospital and getting help with the fees

Will child maintenance affect my benefits payments?

You don’t pay tax on child maintenance, and it won’t affect your benefits.

But if you get a council tax reduction, you might get less help if you get child maintenance. Check with your local council to see if you’ll be affected.

How do I sort out a child maintenance arrangement?

There are three ways to sort out a child maintenance arrangement:

voluntarily with each other
through the Child Maintenance Service (CMS)
in court

Coming to a voluntary arrangement

If you have a reasonable relationship with your child’s other parent and know where they live, this is probably the best option. This is known as making a private or family-based arrangement.

There are no set rules when it comes to a private arrangement. You can work out an arrangement however you want, as long as both parties agree. Instead of making regular payments, you might decide that one of you will pay for clothes, for example.

Arranging child maintenance through the CMS

You might choose to ask the CMS to arrange child maintenance for you if:

you can’t agree a private arrangement with the other parent
a private arrangement you made with the other parent has broken down
you experienced domestic abuse at the hands of the other parent

It costs £20 to apply to the CMS. You won’t have to pay if either:

you're under 19
you've experienced domestic abuse

To be able to apply to the CMS both parents and the child must live in the UK.

You can apply for child maintenance online or by phone.

You’ll usually get the result of the CMS assessment within four weeks unless they struggle to find the paying parent.

The assessment will say:

how much they believe the paying parent should contribute
how this amount was worked out, including the paying parent’s income

You should check this and, once you’ve agreed its correct, the CMS will send you and the paying parent a payment schedule for the year.

Arranging child maintenance through the courts

You might have to go to court to sort out child maintenance if:

the paying parent lives outside the UK; or
the paying parent earns more than £3,000 a week and you want to top up the amount you get through the CMS; or
you want to ask the court for more maintenance to cover the cost of your child’s disability or their education – the CMS won’t take these extra costs into account when making its assessment

Once a court order is in place, the court can force the paying parent to contribute if they don’t make the payments set out in the order.

How much child maintenance should I pay?

If you’re making a private arrangement, it will be down to you and the other parent to agree an amount you think is fair.

If you can’t agree, you can ask the CMS to come up with a figure.

They’ll take into account:

how many children you have together
the paying parent’s income
how much time the child, or children, spend with the paying parent
whether the paying parent is paying child maintenance for other children or has other children living with them

Use the government’s child maintenance calculator to get an idea of what you should pay or receive.

How do I make child maintenance payments?

If you use the CMS, once they’ve told you how much you need to pay, you can either:

arrange payments with the other parent yourself – this is known as Direct Pay
use the CMS to collect and pass on payments – this is known as Collect and Pay

There are fees for the Collect and Pay service:

20% is added to the payment for the paying parent
4% is taken off the payment for the receiving parent

Both parents will be given a choice. If either chooses Direct Pay, that’s the method that will be used, If the paying parent is late sending the money or misses payments, the CMS can switch the payment method to Collect and Pay.

FAQs

If the CMS is struggling to find the paying parent, they might ask you for more information, like the paying parent’s national insurance number and date of birth. If you don’t know this information, tell the CMS. Just ignoring them will only delay your application.

The paying parent can be traced through any organisation that may hold their details e.g. a current or previous employer, HMRC or the DVLA.

If the paying parent is on certain benefits, you’ll only get £7 a week. Those benefits include:

universal credit for those with no income
employment and support allowance
income support
jobseeker’s allowance
pension credit
state pension

If you both care for your child equally, neither parent has to pay child maintenance. If the CMS is asked to assess whether a parent needs to pay child maintenance, they will look at all the arrangements you have for caring for your child, not simply how many nights they spend with each of you. Keep a diary to show how often you care for your child to help prove you share the responsibility equally.

If a child maintenance arrangement is in place, you aren’t obliged to pay for other things on top. If you want to make voluntary contributions, perhaps towards one-off expenses like school trips etc, you can of course do so. But, in most cases, you can’t be forced to.

If you disagree with a CMS decision about how much child maintenance you should be paying or receiving, you can ask them to look at it again. When you ask the CMS to look at a decision again, it’s called a dispute. They’ll re-examine your case and may contact you or the other parent for additional information.

If the CMS finds their original decision was incorrect, they’ll change it and write to both parents with the new decision and an updated schedule of child maintenance payments. If they stick by their original decision and you still disagree with it, you can appeal. You should do this within a month of the date on the letter telling you the original decision still stands.

If you’re struggling to make child maintenance payments and you have a private arrangement with the other parent, speak to them first and see if you can reach an agreement e.g. to temporarily reduce your payments. If you can’t agree a way forward with the other parent, they could ask the CMS to collect child maintenance from you instead. The CMS won’t deal with payments missed under the previous private arrangement.

If you have an arrangement through the CMS and miss payments, you’ll get an arrears notice. If you disagree with the amount of the arrears, send the CMS evidence (e.g. a bank statement) showing any payments you’ve made that they’re claiming you’ve missed. You can also ask the CMS not to enforce the arrears while you’re challenging the amount.

If the amount is correct but you can’t afford to pay, try to agree a payment plan for the arrears with the CMS.

If you’re struggling to pay because your income has dropped, you can contact the CMS to see if this makes a difference to the amount of child maintenance you need to pay.