Single parents may have recently received correspondence from the Child Maintenance Service (replacement of the Child Support Agency) stating that parents will be charged for assistance in child support arrangements.
Family Solicitor Andrew Stynes says, "Under the new rules which are to be implemented later this year (date yet to be specified) parents will be encouraged to reach an agreement regarding child support and will be able to access online calculators to assist." In the event that an agreement cannot be reached a referral may be made to the Child Maintenance Service for an assessment. There will be a flat charge of £20 for the person making the referral.
Once the Assessment is concluded it will determine how much the absent parent should be paying to the parent with primary care of the child. In the event that payment is not made collection may be made by the Child Maintenance Service. In this case they will charge the paying parent an additional 20% of the payments made to cover the cost of collection and they will charge the receiving parent 4% of what they receive. It is understood that the thinking behind this is that a large penalty on the paying parent will encourage paying parents to maintain payments without involving the Child Maintenance Service and a small penalty on the receiving parent will discourage unnecessary applications being made to the Child Maintenance Service.
We have offices in the Christchurch, New Milton and the New Forest. Our Family team also cover Bournemouth and Poole. For a free initial chat, please call 01202 499255 and Andrew or a member of the team will be happy to discuss any questions that you may have.