Child support

When your relationship breaks down or you are getting divorced, lots of things will change. You and your partner are going to live apart.

One of you will live with the children and therefore the other parent, who is not living with the children, will pay child maintenance. This is the regular financial support paid to the parent who is the main day to day carer.

There are three ways in which child maintenance can be paid:

• through voluntary child maintenance agreements
• by the Child Support Agency (CSA), a government agency set up to calculate, and in some cases collect, payments of child support from the parent who has to pay child maintenance
• under the terms of a court order