court order variation

Hi ollie08

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

Under child support legislation, 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 the statutory rules on when child maintenance stops on Gov.uk at www.gov.uk/when-child-maintenance-payments-stop.

However, with you having a Consent Order in place for child maintenance, you will need to review the terms and conditions of your arrangement to clarify when your payments will stop. It''s possible to change the terms of your Consent Order but to do this you will need to get legal advice. This usually results in going back to court to set out the application on a standard form. The court will then consider any changes.

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 doesn’t allow parents to change over to the Child Maintenance Service. Only the courts can arrange child maintenance in such circumstances. You can find more information about using the Child Maintenance Service on Gov.uk at www.gov.uk/child-maintenance.

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