Child Support
Child support or child maintenance is payable to the parent who has primary care
for a child. This can be paid in one of three ways:
1)
2)
3)
By agreement between the parents;
By consent in a court order; or
Through the Child Support Agency (CSA).
If agreement is reached during court proceedings and recorded in an order, after
one year either party is at liberty to apply to the CSA for a re-assessment of child
maintenance and a revised figure would take precedence over anything in an order.
Parents may choose to do this if there has been an increase or decrease in salary
during this period or for example the paying parent has moved into a household in
which there are other dependent children.
Child maintenance is currently changing. It is payable until 16 or 20 if in full time
education (the increase from age 19 to 20 only came into force in March 2013 and
currently only applies if there are two or more children). The other recent major
change is that maintenance is now based on gross income (if there are two or more
children) the net regime still applies if maintenance is paid for one child but this will
no doubt move to the gross regime very shortly.
If