Child Support in UK Law

It is important to bear in mind that the child support scheme is not simply a method for the State to recoup part of its benefit expenditure from the absent parent. It is important to bear in mind that the child support scheme is not simply a method for the State to recoup part of its benefit expenditure from the absent parent.

The child support system has elements of private and public law but fundamentally it is a nationalised system for assessing and enforcing an obligation which each parent owes primarily to the child. The child support system has elements of private and public law but fundamentally it is a nationalised system for assessing and enforcing an obligation which each parent owes primarily to the child.

Since "the liable person" means "a person who is liable to make payments of child support maintenance" (section 33(1)(a)), how could the magistrates' court be satisfied that child support maintenance has become payable by such a person if it cannot enquire into whether the person against whom the liability order is sought was liable to make the payments in the first place?

The conventional award would not be, and would not be intended to be, compensatory. But it would not be a nominal, let alone a derisory, award. It would afford some measure of recognition of the wrong done. And it would afford a more ample measure of justice than the pure McFarlane rule.

This is not, it is agreed, a factor of limitless importance in the sense that it will prevail over all other considerations. It is a factor, however, that must rank higher than any other. It is not merely one consideration that weighs in the balance alongside other competing factors. Where the best interests of the child clearly favour a certain course, that course should be followed unless countervailing reasons of considerable force displace them.

Decisions both in our courts and in the ECtHR therefore combine to lead me to the confident conclusion that, as a severely disabled child in need of lengthy in-patient hospital treatment, Cameron had a status falling within the grounds of discrimination prohibited by article 14. Why should discrimination (if such it be) between disabled persons with different needs engage article 14 any less than discrimination between a disabled person and an able-bodied person?

The fundamental reason for applying the manifestly without reasonable foundation test in cases about inequality in welfare systems was given by the Grand Chamber in Stec (para 52). Choices about welfare systems involve policy decisions on economic and social matters which are pre-eminently matters for national authorities.