Child Maintenance Service

The Child Maintenance Service is for when you and the other parent can’t agree to a family-based arrangement for Child Maintenance payments.

Please note - you must talk to Child Maintenance Options before you can apply to the Child Maintenance Service.

The Child Maintenance Service can:

• try to find the other parent if you don’t know where they live, to sort out child maintenance
• sort out disagreements about parentage
• work out how much child maintenance should be paid
• arrange for the ‘paying’ parent to pay child maintenance - the parent who doesn’t have main day-to-day care of the child
• pass payments on to the ‘receiving’ parent - the parent who has main day-to-day care of the child
• look at the payments again when changes in parents’ circumstances are reported
• review the payment amount every year
• take action if payments aren’t made