How Often is Child Maintenance Recalculated? Can Child Maintenance be Varied?
When you are a separated parent you need to know how much you will be receiving or paying in child support. Otherwise, how do you know if you can afford your mortgage or rent payments or if you can book to take your child on holiday? Whether you think the child maintenance payments are too high or too low there is some benefit in knowing there is a fixed amount payable. However, our Northwest family law solicitors are asked about when child maintenance can be recalculated and varied.
For expert family law advice call our team of specialist divorce lawyers or complete our online enquiry form.
Can child maintenance be varied?
Child maintenance can be varied. How and when you go about doing so depends on how the payments are made. The payments could be through:
- Voluntary payments – called a family based agreement
- Child Maintenance Service with the Service either just carrying out the assessment or assessing the figure and sorting out the payments
- Family court order
Who can ask for child maintenance to be changed?
The person paying the child support or the parent receiving it can ask for the level of child maintenance to be changed. For example, the parent paying child support is entitled to ask for child maintenance to be reviewed if:
- Parenting arrangements change. For example, if the child moves to live with them, the arrangements are changed to shared parenting or if there is an increase in overnight contact visits
- Income changes. For example, they lose their job, overtime payments or other sources of income
- Personal or financial circumstances change such as moving in with a partner who has children, having another child, separating from a partner and being assessed as liable to pay child support for other children, increasing pension contributions
Sometimes the parent paying child maintenance thinks a review of child support is justified when under the child maintenance rules it isn’t. For example, if the parent who receives the child support:
- Starts a new relationship and their partner moves in so the parent is getting help with their bills
- Has a change of financial circumstances such as getting a promotion at work, a better paid job or inherits money
- Stops child contact without good reason but expects child support to still be paid
- Uses the child maintenance money in a way that the payer is unhappy about. For example, the parent looking after the children going off on annual holidays without the children or appears to spend the child support on their own clothes and hobbies rather than on the children
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Can a parent request a review of child support?
A paying parent or a parent receiving child support can always ask for a review of child support where the child maintenance is being paid voluntarily. Child support will not normally go up by inflation unless that is how you agree to increases in child support. If you have been using the Child Maintenance Service formula to calculate the maintenance payable for your child it is usual to review the amount based on any changes to the paying parent’s gross income and any other relevant changes, such as the frequency of overnight contact.
Will the Child Maintenance Service carry out a child support review?
The Child Maintenance Service will carry out an annual review of an earlier child support assessment to see if the child maintenance figure should go up or down. A request can be made for an earlier review but the Child Maintenance Service will normally only undertake the review if there has been a change of 25% or more in the paying parent’s gross income or other limited situations.
Will the court vary the amount of child support payable?
The court can only make a child support order for a biological child in limited circumstances. If the child support is for a stepchild the Child Maintenance Service does not have jurisdiction and a court order can be made and varied. In most cases, where the court order is for child maintenance for a biological child, once the court order is over 12 months old you cannot apply back to the court to vary or enforce it.
What happens if I need more financial support?
If you need more child support than the child maintenance calculation provided by the Child Maintenance Service (or after you have carried out your own online calculation) then provided you were married or in a civil partnership with the child’s biological parent you can ask for spousal maintenance in addition to the child support.
You won’t be able to ask for spousal maintenance if:
- You were not married or in a civil partnership with the child’s other parent
- You agreed to a clean break financial court order as part of your divorce financial settlement
- You have remarried
What happens if I can’t afford child maintenance?
If you can’t afford to pay child support you can negotiate a reduction if you are paying voluntarily or you can ask the Child Maintenance Service to conduct a review based on a change in your circumstances. If your gross income has not changed but your outgoings have increased this will not change the amount payable by you in child maintenance other than in limited circumstances. For example, if your mortgage payments have gone up your child support payments stay the same unless there has been a change in your gross income.
Legal advice and child support
Asking for a review of the amount of child support can make the relationship between separated or divorced parents more difficult. However, the amount paid in child support must be kept under review as the figure will need to go up or down as income levels change. Our family law solicitors can help you negotiate child support as part of your divorce financial settlement or we can help you review the amount of child maintenance payable when financial or contact arrangements change.
For friendly expert family law advice call our team of specialist divorce lawyers or complete our online enquiry form.
