Overview

The Child Maintenance Service can ask you to:

  • give information about an employee
  • deduct child maintenance from an employee’s earnings
  • send an employee’s child maintenance payments to the Child Maintenance Service

You can be fined £500 for each missed payment and up to £1,000 for not providing information you’ve been asked for.

Deduction from earnings order (DEO)

DEOs are a way of collecting child maintenance directly from a paying parent’s earnings or pension.

The paying parent is the parent who does not have main day-to-day care of the child.

When you’ll get a DEO

You’ll be sent a DEO if your employee is a paying parent who:

  • chooses to pay child maintenance direct from their earnings
  • does not already pay child maintenance that they owe
  • does not pay the correct amount
  • does not pay on time

By law, you must:

  • give information to the Child Maintenance Service if you’re asked to
  • send payments as soon as possible, to arrive no later than the 19th day of the month after the month you made the deduction
  • tell the Child Maintenance Service immediately if there are any problems with taking payments from a paying parent’s earnings
  • make regular deductions

You could be taken to court if you do not send payments and do not explain why