The quickest and easiest way to arrange child maintenance is for you and the other parent to set up an arrangement between yourselves. More than half a million children in the UK now benefit from this kind of family-based arrangement.
You and the other parent can work together to make an arrangement between yourselves that suits your own circumstances. You can agree on the amount and how often payments are paid or received, and you can choose to include other kinds of support, for example, providing school uniforms.
If you can’t make a family arrangement, you can still use the CSA. You can also use a service called Maintenance Direct, where the CSA will work out how much and how often your payments should be but you set up and manage your own payments (with the other parent).
You can also use the courts, but this can take a lot of time and money. In England and Wales, a court can turn a family arrangement into a legally binding Consent Order. In Scotland, it can be registered to make it a legally binding Minute of Agreement
