All family law practitioners were anxious about a system which fixed child maintenance and had no judicial review.

The reality is even worse.There are two problems: first is the creation of a discretion-free zone - the Act itself.

It seems that parents have one foot nailed to the floor.

Some solutions to the division of finances on separation that were previously available are now simply out of reach.The second problem is the agency itself, which generally processes matters too slowly.

We know that one foot is nailed to the floor, but we may not know where and we cannot get anyone to tell us to enable us to begin to work around it.Prior to the Act, the result of a marriage breakdown was that where there had been one household there were now two.

Often there were different priorities, which enabled a quart to emerge from the pint pot.

Family law practitioners divided capital, and agreed levels of maintenance for the spouse and for the child to create a package that made the most of the situation.

Lawyers generally worked fast to make the hole made by legal costs in the family finances as small as possible.These were individual crises, but from Parliament's perspective there were 1.3 million lone parents, of whom 70% were dependant on income support, bringing up two million children, and in three out of four cases receiving no maintenance from the other parent.

So, on 18 July 1990, Mrs Thatcher told us we would have the Child Support Act.The Act fixes an 'assessment' for the 'absent parent' to pay in child maintenance on the basis of income, housing costs, pension contributions and fixed figures for family composition.

From 1997, it will apply in all cases.

There are no powers to substitute other figures for the formula figure, as in the Australian system on which it was based.If capital orders or spousal maintenance can be negotiated, then the assessment can be compensated for and the nailed foot syndrome merely means that the overall quality of package is reduced to a varying degree.On the other hand, if the parents were never married or there is no capital to divide, or the division has been decided already, then the agency enters the breaking household like a diabolis ex machina.For most families the formula is rough justice.

We all know and have met the categories of victim left in its wake.Two children I know in their early teens are the greatest indictment of the formula system.

They ought to be enjoying the benefit of going easily between the homes of both parents who live near to each other.

Instead there is a war, as each parent tries to secure each child for the night so as to clock up either the 104 nights per annum which is so significant in the formula or 183 nights so as to shift the identity of the absent parent altogether.The problem with the Child Support Act is that it stands on one principle: that parents should contribute towards the costs of their child.

It establishes a quasi-judicial machinery to enforce that principle as cheaply and productively as possible.

Its failure to address the other principles on which judicial processes must be based - such as fairness - demands that all practitioners join in the chorus calling for reform.The system we need is one which:-- fixes the levels at which separated parents contribute towards the costs of maintaining their children;-- pays regard to all the circumstances - to include the needs of the tax-payer - with the first consideration being the welfare of the child;-- is as economic and as predictable as can be achieved given those parameters - not the other way around, as is the case under the Act;-- gives people an opportunity to present their case (remember legal aid?); and-- ensures that maintenance levels, once fixed, are paid, and which ensures that maintenance keeps up to date with changing circumstances.Such a system has a review body with discretion to substitute other orders to the one imposed by a formula.

Such a system does not deduct maintenance from the receiving child whose parent is on benefit on a pound-for-pound basis.

Such a system would not involve paying parents clocking up arrears of unknown amounts for months and months whilst their assessments are finalised.There are over three thousand solicitors carrying out mainly family work who are members of the Solicitors Family Law Association.

There are 25,000 solicitors in all carrying out some degree of family work.If the government saw the formula working, the perceived costs advantages might well lead to a Spouse Support Act and a Capital Division (Married Persons) Act.Two things are encouraging such a development.

First, in the package deals we achieve, we make the formula appear viable be cause we compensate for it.

With additional formulas this could not be done.

Secondly, in Ros Hepplewhite, the agency's chief executive, the government has its best chance of making the system work.But perhaps the tide is beginning to turn.

If so, we must rescue what is good.

This Act and agency would have the support of everyone if it was designed to provide a starting point for child maintenance and if it dealt with enforcement.

Where it pretends to answer the complex needs of separating families with some tu'ppeny-ha'penny formula and there is no appeal, it is a disaster.