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HI
I am looking for some advice for my fiance regarding payments to the CSA for his 2 children, we want to know how the payments work and how long you are required to make the payments if one of the children has learning difficulties, we are deciding to go down the CSA route as all communications have now broken down between my fiance and his ex to stage where threats are being made. His eldest son of 16 moved back to his mums last night and I know we only have to pay for him till September this year unless he goes into further education but dont know how it works for his other son. His mum is denying him access to the child with the learning difficulties but that a separate thing we will need to deal with at a later date we just to get the ball rolling and start making the payments so we get no more trouble.
Many Thanks
Jane
Hi Janeo37
I'm William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. The Child Support Agency (CSA) has two different schemes Direct Pay and Collect and Pay. Direct Pay is when the CSA calculate maintenance payments on parents' behalf and then leave it up to the parents to make the payments between themselves. Collect and Pay is a full collection service where they calculate, collect and enforce payments on a parent's behalf.
Child maintenance is payable when the receiving parent is still in receipt of Child Benefit payments and the child is aged under 16, or under 20 and in full-time non-advanced education. When a child leaves full-time education in the summer, Child Benefit generally continues until the first week of September. For child maintenance purposes a child is anyone under 16, or someone between 16 and 20 who is not, or has ever been, married or in a civil partnership.
You may wish to speak to the CSA directly to enquire if child maintenance is paid for a longer period for your fiancé's youngest son. Your fiancé's responsibility to pay starts from around the time that he contacts them or they contact him. Their contact details can be found at www.gov.uk/child-maintenance.
To give you an indication of how much child maintenance maybe payable based on how the CSA calculate maintenance, there is an online calculator on our website at www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator.
To find out more about how Child Maintenance Options can help and access to our tools and leaflets, please visit www.cmoptions.org or call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on Saturday.
I understand your fiancé is being denied contact to his youngest son, however, you are wanting to deal with this at a later date. When you feel the time is right there is a Sorting out Separation web-app available at http://www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation. There is a section on the web-app called if you are not in touch with your child, which may help.
Thanks
William
Hi Jane
How old is his son with learning difficulties? Are the learning difficulties severe enough that he will need support beyond his teenage years? The reason for asking is that if this is the case, I wonder whether his ex may be able to claim through the courts for any additional expenses involved because of this. If you can confirm that you don't currently have a solicitor, we can ask the CCLC whether they have any knowledge of this.
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