Many of us involved in family law predicted that the Child Support Act would be an unworkable disaster and so it is proving to be.However, the Act was needed because of the lamentable inadequacies of the previous system and there was a laudable desire to ensure that absent parents contributed to the upkeep of their children for the benefit of both the parent with care and the state, which has a legitimate financial interest in these matters.

I believe there is a better way to achieve that objective.The previous court system singularly failed to make realistic provision for child maintenance, often in the process justifying this by letting the state 'take the strain'.

That was and is neither healthy nor likely to foster parental responsibility.

In addition, the pressure of the previous system on the public purse was unnecessary and unreasonable.Through the 1970s and 1980s, the courts conspired in the belief that home ownership as a means of keeping a roof over the heads of spouse and children was something for which the state should pay (ie clean break settlements with the state paying income support and substantial mortgage interest).

This was even statutorily enshrined into matrimonial law in the 1980s by imposing on the court a duty to consider and promote clean breaks.Clean break settlements are generally and rightly seen as the best way of resolving family finance and allowing there to be 'life after divorce' with substantial beneficial effects for both parties financially and emotionally.Home ownership might be an ideal to which many aspire, but should they be allowed to keep that aspiration if it is going to depend upon the state funding the process? This is financially draining for the taxpayer and potentially ruinous for the single parent who is sucked into the dependency culture with no way out.Why not spend some of the money now spent on propping up mortgage payments on child care so single parents can have the chance of achieving independence to the considerable benefit of themselves, their children and the state purse?When clean break settlements first became the norm in the 1970s and 1980s, house ownership was 'on the up' but the rental market was a disaster.

That position,for a number of reasons, has largely been reversed.This leads to one overriding conclusion: that it is no longer necessary to give the wife the capital asset of the house because, although it might provide substantial equity, it also entails a mortgage she can never meet without surviving on income support and having her mortgage payments met by the DSS.It would surely be preferable, taking into consideration both her morale and the state finances, to give up the house.

The proceeds would then be available for the husband and wife (by all means if appropriate with disproportionate shares).This would produce a sense of fairness; a willingness by the husband to pay his proper share; and both gives the husband the chance to re-house himself whilst the wife receives a lump sum and the ability to call on the private rented sector for accommodation and has every chance to develop her own financial independence (particularly if this is coupled with some help with child care).Creation of a bureaucratic civil service to assess a level of maintenance that is fair was never likely to work and never will, no matter how it is reformed.

It is simply not capable of performing the task and it is a wonder that the Thatcherite attitudes of the 1980s could ever possibly have led to a conclusion that it could fulfil this role.The success (by and large) of previously nationalised industries after privatisation is the starkest evidence of how the state simply cannot run nationalised systems of the sort the Child Support Agency has been set up to be.It is therefore regrettable that the parliamentary select committee under Frank Field MP, expressing its latest view on matters (see p.9), still feels the need to tinker with a bureaucratic system that will not work.In making some recommendations it seems that the committee is perhaps bowing to the most vociferous objection of the current system (ie failure to recognise clean breaks) but this will only increase the bureaucratic process even more.

Discretionary factors about past payments can much better be dealt with in the forum of a district judge with the normal system of appeals.

District judges are well able to weigh up a multitude of discretionary factors, whilst applying recognised criteria, and to come to a reasonably fair and workable system.However, although the courts are much better able to assess fair and proper child support levels, the courts must have better and more stringent guidelines in which to operate so as to achieve uniformity and fairness combined with the flexibility which a bureaucracy can never achieve.

This is because the courts were always wholly inefficient at realistic enforcement.An amended CSA can have a good chance of succeeding if it concentrates its efforts upon the practical problems of enforcement.

Enforcement can be successfully dealt with in a routine way separately from the task of assessment, whether this is done by a state CSA or a privatised version of it.The present system should be amended to provide, first, a Child Support Agency with vigorous powers as originally envisaged for collection of benefit but no powers as to assessing quantum.Secondly, quantum of child maintenance should be returned to its proper forum in the courts, but with guidelines to ensure that the state's role and cost is recognised and that child maintenance receives its proper priority above most other expenditure beyond personal subsistence.Thirdly, guidelines for child maintenance should be simple so that people at large, let alone lawyers, can understand both the criteria and the calculations.

The court should be able to make allowances for contact expenses, disproportionate divisions of capital and special needs.The courts must recognise that the role of the state's provision in genuine low income families must be maintained but the courts should not allow the state to 'take the strain' where this can be done by the parties themselves operating within a culture and system that is both fair and leads away from dependency.Taken as a package, a system adopting the above main guiding principles can well achieve fairness to the parties and the children, a workable arrangement and a better way forward.