Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the Child Maintenance Service policy in establishing the Paying Parent, in the context of changes in societal norms and the increase in co-parenting and shared parenting arrangements.

The person providing primary care of the child and with whom the child lives is entitled to make an application for child maintenance. This is known as the receiving parent. The receiving parent is determined by which parent looks after the child most of the time. For example, with whom the child has their home and who usually provides day to day care for the child.

The Child Maintenance Calculation can be amended to reflect co-parenting and shared parenting arrangements. A paying parent’s maintenance liability can be reduced where they have overnight care of a child for whom they pay maintenance. This reduction is intended to broadly reflect the cost associated with any overnight care given. The paying parent must have overnight care of any qualifying children for at least 52 nights a year, equivalent to 1 night per week. The amount payable is reduced to a maximum of 50 per cent within bands based on the number of days overnight care is provided over a 12-month period.

The CMS uses bands based on the number of days overnight care is provided, to ensure a fair, consistent, and administratively efficient method of accounting for the costs borne by each parent.

If the CMS is satisfied that both parents have equal day-to-day care for the child, in addition to sharing overnight care, there is no requirement for either parent to pay child maintenance.

There is no statutory definition of day-to-day care, our definition is broadly aligned with that of Child Benefit, where an ‘overall care test’ is used. This provides consistency across government and receipt of Child Benefit is regarded as a good indicator of who is entitled to child maintenance payments.