CSA maintenance payments

hi,

Apologies in advance if this is a silly or obvious question, but it’s an area I don’t deal with very often.

I’ve been contacted by a client who is paying child support. The daughter who is being paid for is 17 years old. She left college in May and got herself a part time job. She currently works 20 hours a week and hopefully in the future this will lead to full time employment.

Client has contacted the CSA and has been advised that child support will continue to be payable up until the age of 19 as the daughter doesn’t work enough hours. Client advised that daughter needs to work a minimum of 24 hours a week before child support payments can cease.

Is the information given to the client correct? I’ve tried searching for this on various websites and discussion boards and can’t find anything to confirm this.

Any advice, information, assistance, etc would as always be gratefully received.

Cheers

John

Gingerbread’s factsheet Making arrangements for child maintenance states the following:

Child maintenance has to be paid for all qualifying children. A qualifying child is:

* A child under 16
* A child under 19 in full time non-advanced education (e.g. A-levels or equivalent)
* A 16 or 17-year-old who has left full-time education but has registered for work or training with an organisation such as Connexions or Careers Wales. In this situation, the parent with care must still be receiving child benefit for the young person.

Making arrangements for child maintenance

On the face of that information, I don’t see that the working hours obviously affect the responsibility to make child maintenance payments.

Thanks for this Paul, much appreciated