Child maintenance is paid by an absent parent for the benefit of the children concerned. 

If you are a non-resident parent, you have an ongoing legal duty to maintain your child financially up until they reach age 18. 

Whether or not you have remarried, or your ex-partner has remarried, does not affect the obligation to continue paying child maintenance. 

However, when the child maintenance service assesses the level of child maintenance payments, the amount of the payments can be varied if you have additional dependents to support. The amount payable can be re-evaluated by the child maintenance service each year and you can ask for the amount payable to be varied if your financial circumstances have changed. 

It is not the case that forming new relationships discharges your obligation to continue making payments to support your children. 

Contact us 

If you have any further questions regarding divorce proceedings, please do not hesitate to contact our expert Family Lawyers.  We have offices based in Wolverhampton and Cradley Heath and serve clients across the West Midlands and Black Country including Stourbridge, Wolverhampton and Birmingham. If you complete our online enquiry form, a member of our team will contact you for an initial discussion.

Alternatively contact Mark Vandaele, Head of Family Law, on 01902 796930 (mvandaele@georgegreen.co.uk)