Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the Child Maintenance Service takes account of a person's lifestyle as well as income in determining liabilities for paying maintenance.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) does not take into account a person’s “lifestyle” in calculating a maintenance liability.

The CMS has access to income information held by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), allowing us to capture a much wider range of income types received by Paying Parents. The definition of income within the 2012 scheme includes almost all additional sources of gross income captured by self-assessment. We refer to this as “unearned income” and it includes incomes from property, savings and investments (including dividends) and other miscellaneous incomes.

This provides a more effective route to taking these kinds of income into account than the “lifestyle” ground which existed for the previous schemes of maintenance.