How much is child maintenance uk parents actually pay? There is no national average worth quoting, because the amount is not negotiated, guessed or read off your rent — it is computed, by one statutory method, from the paying parent’s gross income. This guide is that method end to end: the six steps the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) follows, every rate table it uses, and the arithmetic worked in full, so you can calculate child maintenance for any income and see exactly where the number comes from.

How does child maintenance work, in outline?

Both parents are responsible for their child’s living costs. The parent the child does not mainly live with — the paying parent — pays maintenance to the receiving parent. You can agree the amount privately (a family-based arrangement), or the CMS can work it out, collect it and enforce it. Either way, the statutory method is the reference point: it starts from the paying parent’s gross annual income as held by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), for the latest complete tax year, and processes it through six steps. The figure it produces is an amount per week; payments can be scheduled weekly, fortnightly or monthly, but the law works weekly.

Steps 1 and 2: income, then the things that change it

Step 1 is the gross annual income figure — pay before tax and National Insurance, but after pension contributions. Step 2 adjusts it. Contributions to a private pension scheme come off in full. The yearly figure is converted to a weekly one. Then, if the paying parent supports other children — children in their household for whom they or their partner receive Child Benefit — the weekly income is reduced by 11% for one other child, 14% for two, or 16% for three or more, recognising that part of the income already supports those children. On £800 a week with one other child at home, the income the formula counts is £712.00, and the maintenance on it (for two children, at 16%) is £113.92 a week instead of £128.00.

Step 3: the five rates

The adjusted weekly income selects one of five rates. Below £7 a week the nil rate applies and nothing is payable. From £7 to £100 — or where the paying parent receives specified benefits — the flat rate applies: a straight £7 a week. From £100.01 to £199.99 the reduced rate applies (below). From £200 to £3,000 the basic rate applies, with basic plus on higher incomes. Income above £3,000 a week is not counted at all; extra maintenance on it is a matter for the courts.

The reduced rate is £7 plus a percentage of the slice of income over £100:

Notice what the second table does: in the reduced band, other children are taken into account inside the percentage, rather than by reducing the income first. On £150 a week with no other children supported, the reduced rate gives £15.50 a week for one child, £19.50 for two and £22.50 for three or more.

Steps 4 and 5: the children counted, and the weekly amount

Step 4 counts the children the maintenance is for — including children covered by a family-based arrangement, whose share is deducted from what is payable through the service. Step 5 applies the percentage. So how much child maintenance comes out of a £30,000 salary? £30,000 a year is £576.92 a week, squarely in the basic band: for one child, 12% gives £69.23 a week (£3,600.00 a year); for two children, 16% gives £92.31 a week (£4,800.00 a year); for three or more, 19% gives £109.62 a week (£5,700.00 a year). And at the calculator’s default income of £41,600 — £800 a week — two children means 16% of £800: £128.00 a week.

Step 6: shared care

Finally, overnight stays with the paying parent reduce each child’s share: by 1/7 at 52–103 nights a year, 2/7 at 104–155 nights, 3/7 at 156–174 nights, and at 175 nights or more the share is halved with a further £7 a week taken off for that child. Give the £31,200 case (two children, £96.00 before shared care) 104 nights, and the payment becomes £96.00 × 5/7 = £68.57 a week. After any reduction, the payment cannot fall below £7 a week; and where day-to-day care is exactly equal, there is no paying parent for that child and nothing is payable.

One income, three families — and the monthly view

The weekly figures above are the law’s native unit, but households budget monthly. Because the service multiplies the weekly amount by 52 and divides by 12, the £30,000 cases land on unusually clean monthly numbers:

Higher up the income scale the basic plus taper shows its effect. At £78,000 a year — £1,500 a week — one child produces 12% of £800 (£96.00) plus 9% of the remaining £700 (£63.00): £159.00 a week, an effective rate of about 10.6% of gross income rather than the headline 12%. At £182,000 a year the cap binds: two children are charged on £3,000 of the £3,500 weekly income — 16% of £800 plus 12% of £2,200, £392.00 a week — and the top £500 a week of income is simply outside the formula.

When the service does not know the income

The whole method hangs on the Step 1 figure, so the scheme has an answer for a paying parent whose income cannot be obtained: the service first asks the parent, employer or accountant directly; it can then make a best-evidence assessment from previous information or official earnings statistics, or a default maintenance decision — a set weekly amount by number of children, deliberately set so that providing the real income is usually the cheaper option. Amounts underpaid while a default or estimated figure stood are then made up once the correct amount is worked out. Failing to provide information the service asks for, or providing information known to be false, is an offence with a fine of up to £1,000 — one reason the HMRC route, which needs nobody’s cooperation, is the normal one.

The questions behind the numbers

If you are asking how much child maintenance should I pay, uk rules give exactly one route to the answer: your gross income, through the steps above. How much maintenance should I pay, if your income is the one in question? Run your own gross income through the tables above — or the calculator — and the estimate will be close to the service’s starting point. How much child maintenance should I get, if you are the receiving parent? The same arithmetic from the other side: the figure turns on the paying parent’s verified income, which is why the service uses HMRC’s records rather than either parent’s estimate. Two common questions carry an old name. If you are asking how much csa should I pay, or how much is csa for a case like yours, the answer begins with the fact that the CSA is closed: since November 2013 every new case is a CMS case, assessed by the method in this guide on gross income — not by the old CSA percentages of net income.

How long, and how it changes

How long do you pay child maintenance for? Until the child is 16, or 20 if they remain in approved education or training. The amount is not frozen: the service reviews every case annually against the latest HMRC income, and either parent can report a change sooner — a current income 25% or more away from the figure in use can be substituted at any time. Variations can also adjust the formula for income it cannot see (dividends, rent, assets) or for specified expenses. To work out child maintenance for your own figures with the same steps, use the calculator: how to work out child maintenance is exactly the sequence above, and the tool runs it in order — income, reductions, rate, shared care — so how much child maintenance do I have to pay, or receive, gets a number you can check against every table here.

Open the Child Maintenance Calculator