Does my ex have to provide financial support for our children?

Yes, regardless of whether you and your child’s other parent are together or separated, both parents have a responsibility to financially support their children until they are at least 16.

If you are separated from your child’s other parent, and act as your child’s primary caregiver, your ex’s financial support should take the form of child maintenance.

Child maintenance is a financial agreement between parents, where one parent no longer lives with the child. The parent not living with the child (the ‘paying parent’) provides regular payments to the parent living with the child (the ‘receiving parent’) to contribute to the child’s day-to-day living costs.

The purpose of child maintenance is to ensure that the child’s basic needs are met and should contribute to the child’s everyday expenses such as food, clothing, housing and childcare.

Furthermore, parents must contribute to their children’s living costs even if they do not see them – child contact and child maintenance are completely separate issues.

How can I get my ex to pay child maintenance?

Parents may come to an agreement between themselves as to how child maintenance should be paid. But where this isn’t possible, you can contact the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), or in some circumstances, the family court.

You can contact the CMS through the government website. The government website also has a useful calculator tool to estimate how much child maintenance should be paid: Calculate your child maintenance - GOV.UK.

The amount of child maintenance you are entitled to will depend on various factors, such as your ex’s income, how many nights per week your child stays overnight with them, and how many children your ex has.

However, if your ex lives abroad or their income exceeds the CMS’ maximum assessment threshold of £156,000 per year, you can apply to the family court for a child maintenance order.

Where the CMS or the family court have determined that your ex should be paying child maintenance, they cannot simply refuse to pay. Both the CMS and the family court have enforcement mechanisms in place to ensure compliance. For example, they can deduct the amount directly from your ex’s wages or bank account.