Calculating Child Maintenance: Ensuring Your Child’s Needs Are Taken Care Of
If you’re wondering about child support payment amounts, also known as child maintenance, you’re probably the one ordered to pay. Figuring out the right amount of financial support to provide for your child can be tricky.
You want to make sure that all of your child’s needs are being met but you also don’t want to overpay. After all, you still have to support yourself and this means paying your living expenses. Calculating child maintenance with a comprehensive approach is usually the best solution but how do you get started?
What is Child Maintenance?
As we noted earlier, child maintenance and support refer to the same thing. One parent is receiving financial payments from the other to support their shared child or children. Child maintenance is typically court-ordered. This means not paying the ordered support can have legal repercussions that can include docking your pay or even spending time in jail.
If you’re not sure what having your pay docked means, a judge orders a specific amount to be automatically deducted from your pay to cover your child’s maintenance payments.
What does child maintenance cover? These financial payments typically cover what’s known as your child’s fundamental needs like:
- Clothing, toys, and other child essentials
- Routine medical, eye, dental, and wellness care, not including bills associated with medical treatment, copays, or prescriptions (these are separately allocated)
- Rent, food, utilities, and other household expenses. A quick note about these basic needs. If you’re also paying spousal support, these needs may not be included in your child maintenance payments. Every situation is different and this can impact payment amounts.
You may also be wondering how long you should expect to pay child maintenance costs. Most agreements expire on the child’s 16th birthday or when they graduate high school in the UK. There can be exceptions. For example, if your child requires a lifetime of medical care your child maintenance payments may be extended indefinitely.
How Child Maintenance is Calculated?
Divorcing parents can create a child maintenance plan but it will need to be approved by a family court judge.
In other words, you and your former spouse can’t just come up with a number even if you believe it covers your shared child’s needs. So, how does a judge decide how much a parent owes in child maintenance costs?
- The combined income of both parents is usually the starting point. From there, a judge determines how much each parent is contributing to the shared household income.
- The child’s average needs are next. The judge looks at how much it costs on average to provide for the child. Remember, this includes everything from toys and clothing to medical and living costs.
Another factor used in determining child maintenance payments is which parent is responsible for making the decisions. These decisions include the child’s education and healthcare. Since the parent responsible for making most or all of the decisions typically has more parenting time, the other parent is usually the one making the support payments.
Can You Appeal the Child Maintenance Payment Amounts?
Sometimes a parent may feel like the court isn’t considering their needs. Their child support payments may be more than they can afford while also paying their bills like housing, food, and utilities.
Thankfully, UK law gives parents 30 days to file an appeal with Child Maintenance Services (CMS). Working with the court, CMS is responsible for calculating child maintenance payment amounts. There’s a multi-step process to follow if you’re filing an appeal but it’s not too complicated to navigate.
After filing your appeal, CMS will review its decision. If this doesn’t go anywhere, you can appeal to the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal. You have 30 days to contact the office after CMS issues its denial. You’re going to need to show why the child maintenance amount is too high. These reasons can include CMS using incorrect information to calculate your child support payments or failing to consider other factors like a demotion at work or recent job loss.
While there’s no guarantee your appeal will be approved, the process can help make your child maintenance payments a little more affordable.
Calculating Your Child Maintenance Payments
Child maintenance isn’t something most parents look forward to paying, especially if the divorce is contentious. However, a divorce doesn’t mean you’re no longer responsible for your shared child’s care.
Working with a divorce attorney can make it easier to calculate your estimated child maintenance payments. Also, if you need to file an appeal your attorney can help you navigate this legal step.