Child maintenance

Services

How the Child Maintenance Service works out child maintenance

See how the Child Maintenance Service works out maintenance and the rates they use
Making child arrangements if you divorce or separate

How to make arrangements for your children if you divorce or separate, mediation and how to apply for a court order if you cannot agree.
Child maintenance if a parent lives abroad

What to do if you need to get child maintenance and one of the parents lives abroad.

Child Maintenance consultation extended
- 31 July 2024
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Press release
Curfews proposed for parents who fail to pay child maintenance
- 9 July 2022
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Press release
Government needs to do more to improve the welfare of separated families
- 22 October 2019
- Social Security Advisory Committee
- Press release

Child Maintenance Service: data insights
- 23 June 2025
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Research
Independent review of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) response to domestic abuse
- 3 February 2023
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Independent report
Child Maintenance Service statistics Northern Ireland (Experimental)
- 30 September 2020
- Department for Communities (Northern Ireland) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency
- Official statistics
SSAC Occasional Paper 22: Separated parents and the social security system
- 21 July 2020
- Social Security Advisory Committee
- Independent report
DWP employer engagement survey 2018
- 22 November 2019
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Research

Social security and separated parents
- 31 October 2019
- Social Security Advisory Committee
- Consultation outcome
- Date closed 16 April 2019
Government response to the independent review of the Child Maintenance Service response to domestic abuse
- 19 January 2023
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Policy paper