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  • Breadcrumb

    1. Home
    2. Family, home and community
    3. Parenting and childcare
    4. Child Maintenance Service
    5. Having a child maintenance arrangement
    6. Child maintenance

    Paying parent income adjustments

    If you are a paying parent your gross annual income is needed to work out the weekly amount of child maintenance you pay. Changes can be made to these earnings if you’ve expenses like paying into a pension.

    Parenting terms used by Child Maintenance Service

    • the paying parent – the parent who does not have the main day-to-day care of the child and who pays child maintenance to the receiving parent
    • the receiving parent - the parent who has the main day-today care of the child and to whom the paying parent pays child maintenance

    Payments into a pension scheme

    If you pay into a private pension scheme, you need to update the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). This could reduce your gross weekly income and affect how much child maintenance you have to pay.

    If you pay into an occupational or employer pension scheme and deductions are taken from your pay by your employer, you do not need to tell CMS. This will have already been taken into account in your maintenance calculations.

    You can contact the Child Maintenance Service 

     Expenses or other income

    If either parent asks CMS to take into account certain costs or expenses a paying parent pays, any other income they may receive, or certain types of the paying parent’s income not included in the initial calculation, this is called applying for a variation. It can reduce or increase the maintenance they have to pay. 

    • Other financial commitments in child maintenance cases

    Income not in pounds sterling

    If you don’t get paid in pounds sterling, this can affect the amount of income CMS uses to work out how much you pay in child maintenance. This is because CMS will take into account the charges you may have to pay when converting the foreign currency into pounds sterling.

    Converting income to weekly figure

    After checking if it needs to take any pension payments, foreign exchange costs and variations you may have into account, CMS will then convert your annual gross income amount into a weekly figure. CMS does this by dividing the gross annual income figure by 365 and then multiplying by seven.

    Paying parent supports other children

    If you or your partner get Child Benefit for children who may or may not live with you and your gross weekly income is £200 or more up to and including £3,000, CMS will reduce your gross weekly income by a percentage depending on the number of children you or your partner get Child Benefit for. The decrease made to your gross weekly income will be:

    • 11 per cent if there is one other child you support
    • 14 per cent if there are two other children you support
    • 16 per cent if there are three or more other children you support

    If you have a gross weekly income of between £100 and £200, CMS will take other children you support into account when calculating the amount of child maintenance you have to pay.

    • How child maintenance is calculated
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    Child maintenance

    • Changes Child Maintenance Service needs to know
    • Child maintenance appeals and complaints
    • Child maintenance payments
    • Child maintenance rates explained
    • Disputing parentage
    • DNA testing in disputes over parentage
    • How child maintenance Annual Review works
    • How child maintenance is calculated
    • How Child Maintenance Service calculates your income
    • Paying parent income adjustments
    • Shared care in child maintenance cases
    • What happens if you don't pay child maintenance

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