Maintenance & Child Support Agency.

Unfortunately in our society today all too many relationships breakdown and one of the most emotionally challenging aspects is how to deal with the children and the issues around child support.

What many people are unaware of is that when the Government introduced the Child Support Agency (CSA) in the early 90's the Courts lost their powers to deal with maintenance for children.  This means that Child Maintenance is no longer a case for the divorce courts or for your lawyer.

The two main circumstances where the Courts used to make maintenance orders were where parents separated or divorced, or where the parents were not married and the child's father did not want to help financially with a child's upbringing.

The role of the CSA (Child Support Agency)

Today the Child Support Agency deals with maintenance for ALL children in all circumstances. This means that lawyers cannot help very much when a father won't pay anything to help the mother bring up a child, or where the CSA has already made an assessment and the father refuses to pay, or makes excuses.

At this point the responsibility rests with the CSA to take action, by taking the non-payer to Court to make them pay by, for example, asking the Court to make an Attachment of Earnings Order so that the money is stopped out of the father's wages each week. There are restrictions on what the CSA can deal with. They cannot for example deal with maintenance for children over 17 years of age.

Where a father is living abroad, the CSA can, in theory, enforce payment by i) getting a Court order and ii) getting it enforced by local law enforcement authorities. They can send orders to all EU states, USA , Canada , Australia , New Zealand and some others but they actually never do this because it costs them too much money.