Child maintenance and Coronavirus

Both parents are legally responsible for the financial costs of bringing up their children.  If they separate, the parent with whom the children live with (the ‘resident parent’) may be entitled to receive money from the other parent (the ‘non-resident parent’) for the benefit of the children.  This is called child maintenance and it is administered through the Child Maintenance Service (‘CMS’).

It becomes even more important for the resident parent to receive child maintenance when times are hard, especially during a global pandemic. On the other hand, paying for child maintenance becomes more difficult, particularly when some parents have been placed on furlough or have suffered reductions in their income because of coronavirus.

There has not been any emergency legislation specifically for child maintenance in relation to coronavirus. Instead, the current law on how the CMS deals with changes of circumstances continues to apply.

Normally, if a non-resident parent experiences a change in their circumstances, such as a reduction in income, they would notify the CMS of this. This still applies. However, it is expected that there will be delays in administering the CMS system. This is because the CMS is part of the Department of Work and Pensions (‘DWP’) and the DWP are dealing with a huge influx of new benefit claims. It is assumed that some of the staff who normally work on the CMS have been temporarily assigned to other duties and some may be self-isolating. It is, therefore, very important that the non-resident parent notify the CMS about a change in their circumstances as soon as they can. Even if it takes a long time for the CMS to process that information, due to a backlog of work developing, it will be the date that the non-resident parent made contact that matters.

Non-resident parents who do not remember to tell the CMS that their income has reduced, or tells them too late, may find that they end up paying more child maintenance than they should have done as a result. Further to this, they may find that end up in arrears due to falling behind with payments; unfortunately, by then it may be too late to do anything about it.

Katherine Parker is a trainee solicitor in the Family Department at Barker Gotelee Solicitors in Suffolk.

Ipswich Family Solicitors – for more information on our range of legal services, please call the team on 01473 611211 or email [email protected]