How does the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) work?
- Court Help Limited
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
18th May 2025
What is the Child Maintenance Service (CMS)?
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is the government’s statutory child maintenance service for calculating, collecting and paying out child maintenance payments.
The Non-Resident Parent (NRP) is the parent who pays the Parent/Person With Care (PWC/PEWC) (the resident parent) weekly child maintenance payments for the upkeep of the child.
This is paid in situations where the child’s parents are separated and not living in the same household. The PWC is the parent with whom the child lives most of the time and therefore, requires financial support from the NRP with regards to the child’s needs. These are known as living costs.
How does CMS work?
If the two parents agree between them privately on how much the NRP should pay the PWC for the child’s living costs, then CMS’ involvement is not required. The two parents can privately arrange weekly/monthly payments via direct debit or cash or in whichever way they decide.
However, if the two parents cannot come to a mutual private agreement, this is when the PWC would apply to CMS for regular child maintenance payments from the NRP. You can apply via the gov.uk website or call CMS directly.
Once CMS has all of the information from you required to process your application, such as your National Insurance number, your bank account details, your child(ren)’s name and date of birth, how many nights a week the child spends with each parent and the full names and addresses of both parents, they will contact you (typically within 4 weeks) to let you know the status of your application.
Once the application has been successful, for example they’ve located and contacted the NRP who has provided them with their financial information such as their annual income and you’ve agreed that the information is correct, CMS will send you and the NRP a payment schedule and payments can begin.
How do I apply?
To apply for child maintenance payments via CMS, you apply online via the gov.uk website. You can also apply over the phone with CMS directly.
To be eligible for an application to the CMS, you, the NRP and the child(ren) must be habitually resident in the UK, the child is either under 16 or if the child is between 16 - 20 they must be in approved education and no one else already receives child maintenance payments via CMS for the child(ren).. If your child is between the ages of 16 and 20, they are known as a ‘qualifying child’.
You must provide the CMS with your National Insurance number, your bank account details, your child(ren)’s name and date of birth, how many nights a week the child spends with each parent and the full names and addresses of both parents. It is important that the PWC provides correct and up to date information on the NRP so that they can be located and contacted by CMS.
How long does it take?
After you have made the initial application to the CMS, the CMS will contact you as to the result of your assessment and whether you agree with it. This typically takes around 4 weeks but may vary.
Payments will begin depending on what is decided in the payment schedule; however, they should either be from the present month, the month the application to the CMS was made, or the following calendar month. This may also vary therefore, look closely at your payment schedule. You should then receive child maintenance payments either weekly or monthly from the NRP.
How is it calculated?
The NRP will provide CMS with their financial information such as their total gross annual income either from employment or self-employment, profits from a business, pensions and any government benefits they may receive. CMS will then confirm this information using HMRC’s records and calculate the weekly child maintenance payments the NRP will make.
Another way in which weekly child maintenance payments are calculated is by percentage of gross weekly income. Eg for 1 child the NRP may pays 12% of their gross weekly income, for 2 children it is 16% and for 3 or more children it is 19%. This rate does however depend on what rate the NRP’s gross weekly income falls under. The rate bandings are depicted in the table below and are calculated using a formula:
If the NRP is in prison, is hospitalised, is unemployed, is under 16 years old or is in between 16 - 19 years old and in full-time education or their otherwise total weekly income is less than £7, they do not have to pay any child maintenance. 33
CMS use the most recent complete tax year for their calculations. Therefore, if an application is made to CMS in February 2024 for example, CMS will use the information from the full tax year from April 2022 to April 2023 to make their calculations.
Importantly, CMS also takes into account the number of nights the child(ren) spend with each parent per year. If the parents share care of their child(ren) or if they child(ren) spend over 52 nights a year with NRP, they consider this as shared care and CMS will take this into consideration in their calculations. Formulas can be used to calculate the percentage reduction rate in CMS depending on how many nights a year the child will stay overnight at the paying parents house.
How is it paid?
Child maintenance payments are made either weekly or monthly by the NRP either via direct debit payments known as ‘Direct Pay’ or via the CMS known as ‘Collect and Pay’.
Direct Pay is when the NRP makes payments directly into the PWC’s bank account from their own. There is no fee for making payments via Direct Pay.
Collect and Pay payments are made via the CMS where the NRP pays the child maintenance payments to CMS, who in turn pay it to the PWC. This is done in cases where a previous Direct Pay has failed or in cases of domestic violence where one or both parties don’t want to use Direct Pay.
Through payments made and collected by Collect and Pay, both parents pay a fee. The NRP pays an additional 20% a month known as the payment fee and the PWC pays a 4% collection fee.
This means that if the total amount of child maintenance the NRP is due to pay is £100, if the parents use Collect and Pay, the NRP will pay an additional 20%, which would be £20, therefore, the total monthly payment for the NRP would be £120. £20 will be kept by CMS and a £100 will be paid to the PWC, as was initially agreed. CMS will charge the PWC a 4% collection fee meaning they will deduct £4 from the total £100 thus, leaving the PWC with a £96 monthly child maintenance payment. This is the amount the PWC will receive into their bank account.
What if my circumstances change?
If there is a change in anyone's circumstances, either of the parents can contact CMS to report this. This could lead to a review which may mean a chance in the amount of CMS paid/received. CMS advises that the parent contacts them as soon as possible after the change occurs, and contact information for CMS can be found on this gov.uk page.
Some examples of the changes that would have to be reported are:
you change who the child’s main carer is
you change the agreement on how often the child stays overnight, either with the paying parent or a local authority, and this change to ‘shared care’ affects your child maintenance payments
you move house (make sure to send CMS your new address within 1 week of moving)
you change your phone number
you change your bank details
you want to change how you make and get payments using Direct Pay or Collect and Pay
you want someone else to deal with your case for you
you want to close your case
you add a child to your case
the child is being adopted by someone else
the child no longer lives in the UK
someone on the case passes away
What if I don’t agree with CMS’s decision?
If you disagree with the decision CMS made, you can go through a standardised process to challenge it. This is a "mandatory reconsideration" and has to be asked for within 30 days of you receiving a decision letter.
Once the mandatory reconsideration happens, if you are still unhappy with the decision made, you can appeal to the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal for another reconsideration. This is done via a form which is found on the gov.uk website, form SSCS2. It will need to be filled in with an attached statement explaining your position. Ideally, you should ask for this within 30 days of your mandatory reconsideration. If you do not do so, you will have to add an explanation as to why you didn't do so. We at Court Help Limited can help you draft this position statement, as paralegals who are experienced in drafting but work at much lower costs than solicitors. Please feel free to contact us using the contact forms at either the top or bottom of all of our webpages.
You can provide evidence for your appeal, after submitting it. You will be given the opportunity to attend your tribunal hearing to explain your side, but do not have to attend (a decision you will communicate to the court). If you choose not to attend, your appeal will be judged (by a judge and potentially even a financial expert) on the documents you would have already submitted at that point.
It is important to know that it usually takes about 6 months for your appeal to be heard by the tribunal.