Child Law
Expert Child Maintenance Solicitors
The solicitors at Grant Stephens Family Law understand how overwhelming it can be navigating a separation and children. Our solicitors will expertly advice you on your rights to child maintenance to financially support you raising your children.

During a divorce or a separation, it can be tricky to negotiate all the aspects, including child maintenance. As expected, the financial burden is usually placed on the parent who is looking after the child most of the time. Child maintenance evens this out by allowing the parent whom the child is not living with, to provide a financial contribution towards the living expenses of the child.
Our expert solicitors here at Grant Stephens Family Law help to ease this process, providing individual advice and support, and making sure you and the children receive the best outcome as possible.
Your local Child Maintenance Solicitors
Grant Stephens Family Law has offices in both Cardiff and Swansea, perfectly positioning us to assist clients across Wales and the wider UK. Our solicitors have years of experience assisting clients with child maintenance matters, ensuring that the welfare of them and their families are protected
What makes us different?
Grant Stephens Family Law is a boutique law firm, specialising in a comprehensive range of family law matters. We are proud to have been recognised as a ‘Top Tier Firm’ by the legal 500 for two consecutive years, highlighting our expertise, experience and excellent client care.
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What is child maintenance for?
Child maintenance is a payment towards the day-to-day expenses of having a child. These might include:
- Clothing
- Food
- Travel
- Extra-curricular activities
- Extra costs of utilities
- Private school fees
In what scenarios does child maintenance get paid?
Child maintenance gets paid when the child, or children, are staying with one parent more than they are with the other parent.
In situations in which the parents have shared care of the children, child maintenance would not be applicable.
How do you negotiate child maintenance?
Parents are sometimes able to amicable negotiate the terms and the amount of maintenance to be paid through court alternative methods such as mediation or collaborative law, however, this is not always possible.
There are three ways in which child maintenance can be arranged:
A family-based arrangement
The payments are negotiated directly between the parents, without the need of a third party or a court to be involved.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS)
CMS will calculate the payments due to the receiving parent, give the paying parent an opportunity to arrange the payment themselves, failing which, collect and enforce the payments.
A child maintenance ‘Top-Up’ order
If the paying parent’s income exceed £156,000 gross per year, it might be necessary for the receiving parent to apply to the family court for a ‘Top-Up’ order
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Frequently Asked Questions
How is child maintenance calculated?
Child Maintenance is calculated based on the gross annual income of the paying parent. It also takes into account various factors such as pension contributions and other children that they may be supporting financially.
What age does child maintenance stop?
Child Maintenance payments continue until the child turns 16 or if the child is still in full time education, maintenance payments continue until the child turns 20
Who is entitled to child maintenance?
The parent that has the child more than 50% of the time is the person who is entitled to receive child maintenance
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