Our main aim is to get regular child maintenance payments . This means that we need to collect money that is owed by the non-resident parent (parents who don’t have day to day care of the child) and get it to the parent who provides most of the child’s care.
A DEO is a secure way to regularly collect child maintenance. We have designed DEOs to work in a similar way to attachment of earnings orders which are used to collect debts such as fines. As an employer you may already be familiar with these.
DEOs are one of the normal ways a non-resident parent can pay child maintenance through the CSA, but they can also be applied if the non-resident parent fails to agree a payment method or misses payments. Although the decision to apply a DEO is taken by us and not the courts you would be committing an offence under section 32(8) of the Child Support Act 1991 if you do not comply with a DEO. This could lead to a prosecution and a fine.
When we send you a DEO for one of your employees please give it to the person who organises the payment of wages or pensions in your organisation. You must deduct the amount shown on the order. The amount will include the regular child maintenance amount and any arrears that may be due. If one of your employees has more than one DEO applying to them, deductions should be taken in date order.
Once you have sent us the money you have deducted and it has been cleared through our bank, we will pass it on to the parent or person who cares for the child. It is very important that we receive the money quickly as a delay could cause hardship to the children who are entitled to it.
