• • • Each parent has a financial responsibility to maintain his or her children. The Child Support Act 1991 (CSA) was introduced when the Government realised that a large number of single parents were dependent on the state for support of themselves and their children. Research showed that many consent orders made no provision, or inadequate provision, for the maintenance of children by the parent with whom they did reside, and that even where there were satisfactory orders only 25% of absent parents paid regularly!

      
      

Under the CSA the state undertook the responsibility for calculating and collecting child maintenance where the parties could not agree a court order. The CSA has been an expensive failure, universally criticised and condemned, despite various fundamental amendments. In the financial year 2004/5 the CSA cost the state £208 million more than it recovered. Under the current regime the basic rate of Child Support Maintenance payable is 15% of the non-resident parent's net weekly income for one child, 20% for two and 25% for three or more

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