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Legislation
The key pieces of domestic English and Welsh legislation addressing this topic are the Child Support Act 1991, the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008, and Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989. As with all legislation, we recommend that you avoid legislation.gov.uk, and instead refer to a subscription database such a Lexis or Westlaw. This will ensure that you are working with an up-to-date version.
Television and radio documentaries
You may have access to a resource called Box of Broadcasts via your college or university. This is provided by the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council and gives on demand access to many television and radio programmes going back years, for educational purposes. Some programmes also include transcripts. There are many documentaries available. These include:
Victoria Derbyshire Show (BBC News 24, 20 March 2017)
Parliamentary discussions of child maintenance (BBC Parliament, various dates). These are best located by using the search term ‘child maintenance’.
Government portal outlining the range of options for agreeing child maintenance (including a maintenance calculator) and the range of ways in which payment can be required if the parties do not agree. Note that the emphasis is very much on people coming to their own agreements.
How child maintenance is worked out
The underlying calculations are not at all evident from the Child Maintenance Options website, but here they are in this and the linked pages:
Gingerbread, Children Deserve More: Challenging Child Maintenance Avoidance (2017)
Report by a charity for single parents, which identifies the loopholes that allow child maintenance avoidance or the payment of an amount that bears no relation to the payer’s actual wealth. Includes recommendations for rules changes.
Report by a charity for single parents, which assesses child maintenance arrangements among low income single parent families following a change that allowed single parent benefits claimants to retain child maintenance without it affecting their benefits entitlement. Previously, any child maintenance received reduced state benefits.
Research into how payers see child maintenance and why some refuse to pay.
Jo Roll, Child Support Research Paper 94/20 (House of Commons Library, 1994)
Useful summary of the law in 1994, including controversies and the views of a number of campaign groups.
‘In February 2006, Sir David Henshaw was asked to redesign the system of child support with the following terms of reference: how best to ensure that parents take financial responsibility for their children when they live apart; the best arrangements for delivering this cost effectively; options for moving to a new structure whilst recognising the need to protect the parent in the current system. The report proposes a fundamental change. The aim is to introduce a system that will allow parents to make their own arrangements, with involvement from the state when such arrangements are not possible. In addition most parents on benefits should be allowed to keep the maintenance they receive.’
Government consultation to improve enforcement and decide what to do with the vast amount of historic arrears. Includes proposals to deduct payments from certain benefits and joint bank accounts.