Statutory Maintenance Service
What the Statutory Maintenance Service does
We calculate and collect child maintenance from the parent who is not the main day-to-day carer of their child (the non-resident parent) and make sure that it is paid to the parent or person who is the main day-to-day carer of the child (the parent with care).
Our role
We support parents in taking responsibility for their children by:
- tracing parents who no longer live with their children (the non-resident parent) in cases where the parent residing with the children (the parent with care) wants support in seeking maintenance, or is required by benefits rules to seek such support
- working out how much child maintenance should be paid by the non-resident parent, to help meet their child's everyday living costs
- (in some cases) handling the payments from the non-resident parent to the parent with care
- monitoring these payments and taking appropriate enforcement action where payments are late or missed.
Our main activities
- contact parents with care and non-resident parents
- discuss and explain the amount of child maintenance to be paid with non-resident parents and parents with care
- take action to resolve paternity disputes in accordance with child maintenance law
- arrange suitable methods of payment
- ensure that a pattern of regular payments is established.
We also continue to maintain child maintenance arrangements by:
- keeping calculations up to date when a change is reported
- monitoring payments and discussing late payments with both parents
- taking action where necessary to re-establish payment and recover arrears.
The Statutory Maintenance Service will intensify and increase our efforts to improve our client services and get more money flowing to more children.
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