The government is making a bad situation even worse with its new legislation covering child support.

The proposals are deeply flawed and will cause misery and injustice.The proposals to reform the Child Support Agency (CSA) include a blanket formula to determine child maintenance.

The formula will apply irrespective of parents' wishes or children's needs.

Non-resident parents will have to pay 15%, 20%, 25% of net income for one, two, or three or more children respectively.Determining child maintenance is not easy.

The financial circumstances of separated parents are ever more diverse.

Any solution must address these complexities.

A simple formula seems appealing, but it would mean individual circumstances are ignored.

The CSA will continue to be despised, and obstructive fathers will still justify not paying.The 'simplicity' will mean ignoring the ability to pay.

For example, at the moment the CSA can take into account the cost to the non-resident parent of rented accommodation.

This will be ignored under the reforms.

Those paying high rent will face rocketing payments.Lone mothers wil l find their payments reducing.

The new formula ignores financial need as it concentrates on a percentage of net income from earnings.

It is unclear how bonuses for the employed will be taken into account, let alone how investment income will be dealt with.

The self-employed have the ability to adjust their income, so the scope for abusing the system will be significant.The respective wealth of the parents will be irrelevant.

A woman fleeing the family home because of domestic violence will still be required to pay maintenance to the wealthy father -- if the children stay with him.The father working long hours on low pay to maintain the family finances comes home to find his wife has had enough, and has taken the children to go and live with a new man.

He has lost his family and is without the wife's part-time income or child benefit.

He will still pay 25% of his income into the wife's new family and it will be impossible to maintain his mortgage and avoid debt.

There will be no opportunity to voice his sense of unfairness.There is a sensible solution.

The basic formula could be retained and where it works unjustly either parent could attend court and ask for an examination of the figures and adjustment.As it is, the reforms are at odds with government policy on divorce, under which mediation and discussion is encouraged between parents to settle spousal maintenance or capital adjustment.

The fixed formula proposal excludes parental discussion and is a giant step in the opposite direction.Currently, the courts can still deal with child maintenance, partly because the CSA cannot cope.

It is possible for parents who agree child maintenance to incorporate that agreement into a court order.

Once this is done the courts can regulate and vary the maintenance over future years and the parents have a wider ability to negotiate and agree between themselves, for example in trading off capital or spousal maintenance in return for differing levels of child maintenance.

This will be lost under the reforms as either party can renege on an agreement after one year by making a CSA application and implementing the formula.The government must place individual justice before bureaucratic convenience.

There is an argument for some state intervention when the parent with residence receives welfare benefits, but not in general.

Parents should be allowed to reach their own agreements.

If they cannot agree and the financial matters are all before the court in any event, the court should also be allowed to deal with child maintenance.

At the very least, if the government is determined to push ahead with reforms, an appeal system through the courts should be allowed as a basic human right for parents.The Child Support Bill reaches report stage in the House of Commons this week.

The Law Society is campaigning to make sure the impact of these new CSA 'reforms' is minimised.