Child maintenance is regular, reliable financial support that helps towards a child's everyday living costs. The parent without the main day-to-day care of the child pays child maintenance to the other parent.
Child maintenance can make a significant difference to a child's wellbeing and the quality of family relationships.
You should do everything you can to make sure your child is covered by an effective child maintenance arrangement. It may be one that you and the other parent agree yourselves (a private agreement), or one you arrange with help from the Child Support Agency (CSA), the statutory child maintenance service.
As a parent, you have a responsibility to provide financially for your child even if you live apart from them and the other parent.
If you choose to make a private agreement about child maintenance, you and the other parent can arrange it in whichever way is best for your circumstances.
With an arrangement using the CSA, child maintenance is paid until the child reaches 16 years old, or until they reach 19 years old if they are in full-time education (not higher than A-level equivalent).
Child maintenance is normally arranged as a weekly, fortnightly or monthly payment. This payment is usually based on the income of the parent without the main day-to-day care.
In addition to these regular child maintenance payments, you can also choose to make payments 'in kind'. This is where the parent without the main day-to-day care pays for things directly, such as clothing, bills or school costs.
We're here to help you understand the options available to you for putting in place a child maintenance arrangement.
Find out more about your options for arranging child maintenance.
You can download our getting started guide (PDF, 399KB) to get information about:
- the options available for arranging child maintenance
- how to prepare for making a child maintenance arrangement
- how to talk about child maintenance with the other parent
- practical steps forward and useful organisations which can help you.
You can also read more about child maintenance and your options in our FAQs.
