Hi Camellia2
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 have a Consent Order in place (which is an official ruling made by a court in England and Wales), once it has been agreed and authorised, the paying parent is legally liable to pay the amount the court has endorsed. However, the court does not monitor or collect payments. This means the receiving parent will need to seek legal advice for any missed or reduced payments, unless they are happy to accept them.
Any Consent Orders that were endorsed after March 2003 are not legally subject to change unless they have been in place for at least 12 months. After 12 months, either parent can apply to the Child Maintenance Service and the Consent Order will no longer be valid. However, if a Consent Order dates back to before April 2003, then law does not allow parents to change over to the Child Maintenance Service. Only the courts can arrange child maintenance in such circumstances.
If you wanted to know the statutory rules that are employed by the Child Maintenance Service, shared care is taken into account in different ways depending on the paying parent’s child maintenance rate. Shared care applies if the paying parent provides overnight care for at least 52 nights per year before a liability will be reduced. This is based on the agreement with the receiving parent and or evidence provided.
However, where the paying parent can prove that they carry out an equal amount of day-to-day care as well as having equal shared care then the Child Maintenance Service regards neither parent to be the paying parent so their child maintenance would be set as nil, even if one parent receives the Child Benefit for a child that maintenance is to be paid for. You can find more information on how the Child Maintenance Service works out child maintenance on Gov.uk at
www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-work...ut-child-maintenance.
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. You can find more information on when child maintenance stops on Gov.uk at
www.gov.uk/when-child-maintenance-payments-stop.
If you are eligible to use the Child Maintenance Service, you may wish to make an application for child maintenance. To do this, you will need to be in receipt of the Child Benefit for your youngest child.
The Child Maintenance Service used two schemes: Direct Pay and Collect and Pay. Both schemes are legally binding and enforceable if payments are not made.
Direct Pay is where the Child Maintenance Service will provide both you and your ex-husband with a child maintenance calculation and then allow both of you to decide the payment method. After this, the Child Maintenance Service will make no further contact unless they are informed that payments have stopped or if there is a change in either of your circumstances.
Alternatively, under the Collect and Pay scheme, the Child Maintenance Service will calculate and collect payments from your ex-husband and then forward them on to you. If you decide to use the Child Maintenance Service, your ex-husband’s responsibility to pay will be around the point when he is contacted by the Child Maintenance Service.
To give you an indication of how much child maintenance that may be calculated if you were to use the Child Maintenance Service, we have an online calculator on our website at
www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/.
The Government plans to introduce charges for using the Child Maintenance Service at some point in 2014. There will be three types of charges:
• Application fees
• Fees for collecting and paying out child maintenance
• Enforcement charges for paying parents who do not pay
The best way to avoid charges is to set up a family-based arrangement and not use the Child Maintenance Service at all. However, if you and the other parent cannot agree an arrangement between yourselves, there will be no collection fees for parents who pay and receive child maintenance using Direct Pay, only application fees.
For parents using the Collect and Pay scheme the Government plans to charge collection fees to both the paying and receiving parent, this is for collecting and passing on child maintenance payments.
Under the Government’s plans the paying parent would have to pay 20% in addition to the weekly maintenance payment and the receiving parent would have 4% taken away from the weekly maintenance payment.
If you decide to make an application to the Child Maintenance Service, you will need to contact us at Child Maintenance Options first either by telephone or email, for your unique reference number. This number is personal to you. It is unique and shows that you have spoken to Child Maintenance Options before applying for a statutory child maintenance arrangement. You can find more information about using the Child Maintenance Service by visiting the Government website Gov.uk at
www.gov.uk/child-maintenance.
Another option that you may wish to consider is to set up a family-based arrangement with your ex-husband. With this type of agreement, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, both you and your ex-husband have the freedom to decide the terms of your own arrangement.
A family-based arrangement can include money and other kinds of support, such as your ex-husband directly paying for things that your child may need. Although family-based arrangements are not legally-binding, many parents prefer them because of their flexibility and how easy the arrangement can be reviewed, such as if you or your ex-husband’s circumstances change. You can find more information on family-based arrangement 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
Camellia2 
Camellia2 
