What are my Child Maintenance options?
As a parent looking to arrange child maintenance for your child, you have three choices:
- A Private Agreement – If you and the other parent can agree on how to provide child maintenance for your child without getting the courts or the statutory maintenance service involved – this is called a private agreement. If you feel able to work with the other parent, then this could be the best option for you. Whether this is the best option for you will depend on your circumstances.
- A Consent Order – Consent Order is an official ruling made by a court. To put in place a Consent Order both parents need to agree how much child maintenance is going to be paid and how often. You can do this either privately between yourselves or through a solicitor. You then ask the court to turn this agreement into a Consent Order. This usually happens when people are going to court for other reasons, such as divorce or dividing assets.
- An arrangement using the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Division’s statutory maintenance service – In some situations it just isn’t possible for both parents to come to a private agreement. There may still be bad feelings between you, or there may be a good reason for one of you not to trust the other. Or it may be that you simply prefer to have the security of a Child Maintenance and Enforcement Division arrangement; the Government’s statutory child maintenance service.
Our leaflet
Child Maintenance Guide: Getting Started (PDF 160KB) provides further information about each of the choices, as well as highlighting the key issues you’ll need to think about. It also provides information that will help you weigh up the advantages and disadvantages with each option.
If you want to discuss these options in more detail, you can contact our freephone* information line on 0800 028 7439 and speak to us about your choices.
*Some service providers may charge for the call. If so, we would be happy to call you back once you have given us your contact details.