Stopping Contact if a Parent Does Not Pay Child Maintenance

Many parents want to stop contact if their child’s other parent doesn't pay child maintenance. In this article, our Family Law Solicitors examine the link between contact and child support.
Contact Online and London Family Law Solicitors for contact and child support advice.
Stopping contact if child support is not paid
A parent may think they are right to stop contact if the other parent does not pay child maintenance. While they may have a moral argument, they do not have a legal case to stop contact because child support is not being paid.
Whether child support is unpaid after a voluntary agreement, after a Child Maintenance Service assessment, or under a court order, you are still obliged to comply with a child arrangement order and make your child available for contact.
If there is no child arrangement order, you could stop contact. However, your ex-partner could apply to the court for a child arrangement order. When making the child arrangement order, the court ignores the financial aspects of child maintenance and instead orders contact based on what parenting arrangements it thinks are in your child’s best interests.
Stopping contact, knowing that the court will order contact if your ex-partner applies for a child arrangement order, is unlikely to be in your child’s best interests, as it will be disruptive to them. In extreme cases, the court might allow the parent additional contact time than the amount agreed before contact was stopped or even say that the child should live with the other parent.
Family Law Solicitors recommend that contact between a child and their parent is not stopped or reduced until you have taken specialist children's law legal advice. Our Family Lawyers will talk to you to understand your child maintenance concerns, outline your child support options and highlight the potential consequences of restricting or stopping contact.
Enforcing non-payment of child support
What are the alternate options if a parent should not use child contact to reinstate child maintenance payments?
Non-payment of child support can be enforced, but the enforcement method depends on how the maintenance is paid.
Child support can be paid in three ways:
- Voluntarily
- Under a family court order.
- After assessment by the Child Maintenance Service.
If the child support is paid voluntarily, it cannot be enforced. However, a parent could threaten to apply to the Child Maintenance Service for an assessment or apply to court if the family court has jurisdiction to make an order. The CMS or the court could then enforce payments.
Factors that influence the payment of child support
When deciding whether to apply to enforce payment of child support, you need to consider if there have been any changes to:
- The parenting arrangements.
- The paying parent’s personal circumstances.
- The paying parent’s financial circumstances.
All these factors can influence whether child support should stop, go up, or go down.
If you stop child contact because your ex-partner is not paying child maintenance at the previously agreed or assessed level, then if they take legal advice or the CMS carries out a reassessment, you may find the payment is stopped or lowered.
Parenting arrangements and child support
The current rules say that if parenting time is shared equally, neither parent needs to pay child support to the other. That’s the case even if one parent earns double the amount of the other.
If a parent increases their contact with their child voluntarily or under a child arrangement order, the impact of this change in contact is that the amount of child support could be reduced. For example, if a parent has contact on 102 nights per year, their child support would be reduced by one-seventh of the CMS assessed amount. If contact is increased to 105 nights per year, their child maintenance figure would reduce by two-sevenths.
Many parents find these overnight contact rules difficult to understand, as a parent with care has the same financial commitments whether their child has contact with the other parent on 102 or 105 nights per year. However, Family Law Solicitors recommend that parents check the impact of contact on child support payments before making decisions on contact, child maintenance, and enforcement.
Paying parents' personal or financial circumstances and the impact on child maintenance
Some parents with primary care look to enforce child support payments, not realising that enforcement action will prompt their ex-partner to take legal advice. In some situations, the level of child maintenance can be reduced to reflect a change in the paying parent’s personal or financial circumstances.
Examples of these circumstances are:
- The payer has lost their job or their income has been reduced.
- The payer is in a new relationship and has additional children.
Under CMS rules, any changes in the parent with care's financial or personal circumstances are irrelevant to the amount the paying parent is expected to pay in child support.
What happens if the Child Maintenance Service assessed child maintenance is not paid?
There are two ways for the Child Maintenance Service to manage child support payments:
- Direct pay - the paying parent pays the parent with primary care of the child, or
- Collect and pay – the CMS collects the child maintenance and pays it to the parent with primary care.
If the paying parent on direct pay does not pay in full or on time, the Child Maintenance Service can change the payment method to collect and pay. The CMS charges a fee for its collect and pay service.
With the collect and pay CMS provision, the CMS can take the payment directly from the paying parent by one of three methods:
- From the payer’s earnings by arrangement with their employer.
- From the payer’s bank account by direct debit.
- Direct from the payer’s benefits or pension.
A fee is payable to CMS each time a CMS child support payment is made using the collect and pay method. The fee is:
- 20% of the child support payable – the 20% is added to the amount the parent paying the child support must pay, and
- 4% of the child support figure is deducted from the receiving parent's child maintenance.
This means a payer using the ‘’collect and pay’’ method pays 120% of the CMS-calculated child maintenance, and the parent with care receives 96% of the assessed level of child support.
In cases where there is a CMS assessment and child support is not being paid, the following enforcement action can be taken by the CMS:
- The case can be referred to the Child Maintenance Enforcement unit.
- The unit can apply to the family courts for additional enforcement action.
- A deduction from earnings order, property sales and property charges can be ordered, and the court can impose a prison sentence.
Weaponising contact
Stopping contact because child support is not being paid is sometimes referred to as ‘’weaponising contact.’’
When you are struggling to pay household bills or buy new trainers for your child, stopping contact may appear to be the easy solution to achieving payment of child maintenance. It isn't, because:
- If your ex-partner already has a child arrangement order, they can apply to the court to enforce the order. You may not be able to apply to court to enforce child support payments if the financial support is being paid voluntarily or after a CMS assessment.
- If there is no child arrangement order in place, your ex-partner could apply for an order. Their non-payment of child support is not a bar to contact. You may end up with your ex-partner having more contact than previously agreed or wanting to stick rigidly to their court-ordered contact when you need flexibility.
Family Law Solicitors say that although weaponising contact is never the right answer, there are lots of options available to parents who need to enforce payment of child maintenance.
Contact Online and London Family Law Solicitors for contact and child support advice.
Call OTS Solicitors on 0203 959 9123 or contact us online to make an appointment at our London offices or for a phone or Zoom consultation.
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