The Austin Lafferty Solicitors & Estate Agents Blog

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC) has recently published findings from a survey conducted in 2010 to determine the number of families that have used the Child Maintenance Options telephone service to set up a family-based child maintenance arrangement.

Key findings from the survey include:

• Around 25% of parents who had used the Child Maintenance Options service between July 2008 and January 2010 had an arrangement which included regular financial payments only; 16% had an arrangement based on ad-hoc support only; 23% had both regular financial payments and ad-hoc support; and 37% did not have an arrangement.
• Those with regular financial payments were asked how the arrangement was established: 48% had an arrangement set up via the CSA; 48% had a family-based arrangement; and 4% had an arrangement set up via the courts.
• Of those with an arrangement (family-based or statutory), almost half were established after contact with Child Maintenance Options (48%) and 42% were established before contact with Child Maintenance Options. The remaining 10% were unsure at what point the arrangement had been set up.
• Of those who put an arrangement in place after contact with Child Maintenance Options, 41% said that the service had played a large role in helping them to set up an arrangement.
• Almost three-quarters of those with regular financial payments received or paid all or some of their child maintenance. Of those, 77% received or paid their payments always or usually on time.
• Of those without a child maintenance arrangement, the majority of parents (63%) said they were not likely to make a child maintenance arrangement in the future.

The research also found that the most common reasons cited by parents with care for not having an arrangement in place at the point of the research were:

• they do not have or want any contact with the other parent (23%);
• they do not know where the other parent was living (16%);
• there was a domestic violence issue (9%).

The most common reasons cited by non-resident parents were:

• they could not afford it (20%);
• they did not want contact with the other parent (15%);
• they did not know where the other parent lived (12%).

New research from single parents’ charity Gingerbread has shown that child maintenance payments lift one in five poor families who receive it over the poverty line – but poorer single-parent families are the least likely to receive any maintenance.

The research has prompted calls for the government to rethink its proposed charges for using the Child Support Agency (CSA), which could shut even more families out. The plans include a fee of up to £100 just to apply for CSA help, and the Agency taking a 7-12% cut from all maintenance payments it collects.

The Gingerbread research comes as new government data shows over 876,000 children rely on the CSA for their maintenance, underlining the increasing need for the Agency in ensuring that parents living apart from their children meet their financial responsibilities.

However, the analysis also found that single-parent families living below the poverty line were least likely to receive any maintenance. Just 31% of single parents in poverty received maintenance, compared to 50% of single parents with income levels above the national median. 720,000 eligible families have no child maintenance arrangement at all.