Simple support?

Simplicity and enforcement are at the heart of government changes to the child support agency.

But Scott Neilson asks: have the goals been met, or does the new regime simply bring more problems of its own?

The government's changes to the way the Child Support Agency (CSA) calculates and collects maintenance from absent parents finally came into effect on 3 March 2003, after being laid down in the Child Support, Pensions & Social Security Act 2000.

The new regime, delayed for a year by computer problems at the CSA, has simplicity and enforcement at its core.

Gone now is the CSA's complicated formula for calculating how much an absent parent (usually the father) will have to pay for the upkeep of his children.

In its place is an ostensibly straightforward formula that simply requires absent parents to contribute 15% of their net income towards the cost of rearing one child.

This increases to 20% for two children and 25% for three or more.

Meanwhile, avoiding payments will be more difficult.

The agency's new modes of enforcement include a deduction from salary, a liability order allowing property to be taken in place of missed payments, and even the possibility of disqualification from driving for up to two years.

The CSA also now has the right to track down parents working for British companies abroad.

But the changes do not stop there.

While any parents not on income support will still be able to ask the court to make an order for child maintenance by mutual consent, either parent will then be able to apply to the CSA for a revised maintenance calculation, once the original court agreement has been in place for 14 months.

In its drive for simplicity, the CSA will also now ignore the income of the parent who has retained care.

Furthermore, it will take into account how much time children spend with their absent parent (the more time they spend with the parent, the less that parent will have to pay towards maintenance) and whether or not an absent parent has additional children to support in any new relationship.

Jane Craig, a partner at London firm Manches and chairwoman of the Solicitors Family Law Association (SFLA), is cautiously optimistic that the controversial agency has got it right this time.

'No formula is perfect, and this new one certainly has its faults.

But overall the SFLA sees this as a step in the right direction.

It will help parents to see where they stand as far as providing for their children is concerned,' Ms Craig says.

However, the SFLA, like many family law specialists, retains some concerns.

'We have very real concerns about ensuring that children maintain contact with both parents.

In some ways, the new system may not help this because the amount of overnight contact that a non-resident parent has with a child now has a direct bearing on the amount of child support payable,' Ms Craig says.

'This could lead to arguments about contact, with non-resident parents trying to get more contact to reduce their financial liability and resident parents resisting extra contact because they are worried about having their child maintenance reduced.'

Then there is the question of enforcement.

While the better-armed CSA can now cast its net wider, the government has remained silent over the question of how self-employed absent parents will be made to pay, says Kerry Graham, a solicitor specialising in divorce at west country firm Clarke Willmott & Clarke.

'Without proper enforcement, the changes will be ineffective and children will suffer as a result,' she says.

Then there are the concerns about how the CSA, in a bid to make its calculations easier, now disregards the income of the parent who has retained care.

Emma Harte, a partner at niche London family law firm Alexiou Fisher Philipps, says: 'These days, you've got plenty of "supermums" working in the City and earning pots of money.

The fact that the income of the parent with care is not taken into account may cause resentment.

'Furthermore, if the system is open to manipulation, particularly by self-employed absent parents, it will require resources to investigate - resources the CSA may not have.'

However, the biggest concern for family lawyers is that the new regime gives both parents the right of appeal to the CSA following a court judgment.

Peter Watson-Lee, chairman of the Law Society's family law committee and a partner in Dorset matrimonial firm Williams Thompson, says this may deter the flexible and effective 'clean-break' settlements of the past.

'Before the latest Act took effect, the courts could still deal with child maintenance.

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

Once this was done, the courts could regulate and vary the maintenance over future years and the parents had 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,' Mr Watson-Lee says.

'I think the government just wanted to take things out of the courts.

The Act is going to be very unhelpful for the middle-England, middle-income couple who are trying to settle.

The main argument of the Law Society, when we were talking to ministers about the latest Act, was that it did not need to be imposed across the whole spectrum of society.

Flexibility has been lost.

'From my discussion with ministers over the Act, part of me has come to suspect that they don't really understand its implications.'

Ms Harte says the latest reforms are at odds with government policy on divorce, under which mediation and discussion is encouraged between parents in a bid to settle spousal maintenance or capital adjustment.

'The government is trying to push people more towards mediation - to agree and to be flexible.

It's a shame that we now have the possibility of absent fathers keeping diaries with regard to how many nights they are with the child and how much maintenance they will have to pay,' she says.

The right to opt out of any previous court agreements means 'there is real potential for litigation ping-pong between parents, the courts and the CSA', says Ms Graham.

But William Massey, a partner with Manches, says he and many other matrimonial law specialists have for some time now been advising their clients with one eye on the CSA's new percentages - foresight that makes an opt-out less likely.

'We've been using the new CSA formula as a yardstick for working out what an absent parent's maintenance is going to be.

Anybody who entered into a child support order through the courts, without the full expectation and knowledge that in a year's time it's going to be subject to the new percentages, has only got themselves to blame,' Mr Massey says.

The CSA, which was unable to respond to questions about the new regime, has already received more than its share of bad publicity since its creation in 1991.

Mr Massey says that only time will tell if the government has got it right this time.

'Whether the terribly long application turnaround times actually come down is largely a matter of the resources the government is prepared to throw at the CSA,' he says.

'But whatever the case, it's got to be an improvement on what went on before.'

Scott Neilson is a freelance journalist