Child Maintenance: Agree Or Pay

The Department for Work and Pensions has sent tens of thousands of letters this week to single parents informing them of the Government’s plans to introduce a number of charges for using the Child Maintenance Service. The Child Maintenance Service is the statutory child maintenance service that deals with all new applications for child maintenance and is replacing the Child Support Agency. The Child Support Agency continues to deal with existing cases.

It is anticipated that from the summer of 2014, there will be a £20 fee when registering with the Child Maintenance Service in most cases. If parents are thinking of registering, applications should be made now to avoid this fee. In addition to this, if the Child Maintenance Service is asked to collect money from the paying parent and pay it to the receiving parent, the paying parent will have to pay an extra 20% on top of what they would have otherwise paid and the receiving parent will have the amount of maintenance they receive reduced by 4%. The Government hopes that this will provide an incentive for parents to agree to pay each other directly.

The Government’s plan is to slowly abolish the Child Support Agency and to transfer all cases to the Child Maintenance Service by 2017. If parents currently using the Child Support Agency are unable to reach an agreement once their cases are closed and an application is made to the Child Maintenance Service, the charges will apply to them.

The Work and Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, is of the view that the introduction of the charges will encourage parents to reach agreements in respect of child maintenance. However, Fiona Weir, the chief executive of the single parent charity Gingerbread, has said that the charity is “very concerned that closing CSA cases and bringing in charges may deter some parents from making new child maintenance agreements or pressure single parents into unstable arrangements, and children will lose out on vital support.”