A parent or person with care or a non-resident parent can apply at any time to ask us to work out child maintenance and set up arrangements for payment.
Child maintenance and benefits
If a parent with care or their partner claim Income Support or income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, their claim will also be treated as an application for child maintenance. In most cases, Jobcentre Plus will collect child maintenance information from the parent with care over the phone. Jobcentre Plus will then pass their details on to the CSA so we can contact the non-resident parent to arrange child maintenance payments.
The parent with care or their partner will not get Income Support or income-based Jobseeker's Allowance if the amount they should get is less than the child maintenance the non-resident must pay. However, the parent with care will get the full amount of child maintenance the non-resident parent pays. We can help parents to set up the arrangements for these payments.
If the amount of child maintenance the non-resident parent must pay is less than the amount of benefit Jobcentre Plus say should be paid, the parent with care will keep up to £10 a week of the total amount of child mainteance paid, as well as Income Support or income-based Jobseeker's Allowance. This is called the child maintenance premium. The Government will keep the rest of the child maintenance to make up for the money paid as benefits.
You can find out about what happens if the parent with care is receiving benefits and does not want to apply for maintenance.
Child in Scotland
A child living in Scotland can apply for child maintenance if:
- they are aged between 12 and 19 and are in full-time education (up to Higher and Advanced Higher)
- they live apart from both of their parents, and
- the parent (or parents) they don’t live with have their home in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland. Or they live abroad but work for an employer with a business in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
For more information go to applications from children.
Page topRelated information
- Read our leaflet
"What is child maintenance and how does it affect me?" [PDF 246Kb]
