[Solved] full time education and CSA payments

Hi Dave,

As a full time student you don't have to pay her anything, so anything you do pay her is off your own back and entirely up to you. The CSA will not get involved.

Check out the sticky at the top of this section, it's called how does the CSA calculate payments and it links to a useful CSA leaflet which explains things in a little more depth.

Hi dave 1.

Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant.

You could speak to your daughter's mother and renegotiate the family-based arrangement you currently have in place. While this type of agreement is not legally binding it is flexible and can be changed as your circumstances change. A family-based arrangement does not just have to be about money, you providing clothes or helping with child care could count, for example.

To help you to continue with your family-based arrangement, we have got a number of guides available. We have a Child maintenance decisions: Information for parents living apart from their child guide, which gives details of the options available to you and offers information to help you with the negotiation process. We also have a Child maintenance decisions: A guide to talking about money, this provides information around discussing finances and agreeing child maintenance. If you feel any of these will help you, they are easy to print from our website at: http://www.cmoptions.org. We also have a Discussion guide available to download from our website.

For an indication of how much maintenance may be payable, you can use the maintenance calculator that is available on our website. You can use this figure as a starting point to try and renegotiate your family-based arrangement.

If you are able to renegotiate your agreement, we also have a family-based arrangement form that is not a legally enforceable document but may put your agreement on a more formal basis. You can complete this together with your daughter's mother and sign your names to show your commitment to your arrangement.

If an application is made to the Child Support Agency (CSA), they have four different maintenance rates and the rate that is to be paid is dependent on the paying parent's weekly net income. The four different rates are as follows:

Basic rate is for paying parents with a weekly gross income of more than £200
Reduced rate is for paying parents on a weekly net income of between £100 and £199.99
Nil rate is where paying parents earn less than £5 a week, are in full-time education, under sixteen, in prison or living in care
Flat rate is when paying parents pay a flat rate of £5 child maintenance per week, no matter how many children they have, if their weekly net income is between £5 and £100. This also applies if the partner they live with is in receipt of Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance or Pension Credit.

You can find further information regarding the different rates online at http://www.gov.uk/child-maintenance. If you have any further questions about how they calculate maintenance, you may want to speak to the CSA directly.

To find out more about how Child Maintenance Options can help you visit cmoptions.org or call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on Saturday.