The future of child maintenance: laissez-faire

AuthorSamuel Salter-Galbraith
Pages35-47
S.S.L.R. The future of child maintenance: Laissez-faire
35
Vol.2
The future of child maintenance: Laissez-faire
Samuel Salter-Galbraith
In its recent Green Paper Strengthening families, promoting parental
responsibility: the future of child maintenance, the Government indicated
that they would “reform the system to encourage families to reach their own
solution on contact and maintenance wherever possible. However, where
parents are not able to make maintenance arrangements themselves the
Government will provide a strong and cost-effective service to transfer money
to support children.” Using evidence from case-law and legislative provisions
introduced since 1993, as well as the experiences of other jurisdictions, this
essay critically evaluates whether the Government’s recent proposals on child
maintenance are likely to succeed in achieving positive outcomes for families
and children as well as the tax-payer. This essay hypothesises that this Green
Paper proposal provides only the barest of bones for the child support scheme
and if it were set in motion as it currently stands, it would fail. It places too
much faith in parents that they will assume responsibility and proposes a
back-up service. Past evidence has shown that all preceding systems have
failed.
Introduction
n the UK there is approximately £3.7 billion in outstanding child support
arrears owing to families. The “simply disastrous performance”
1 of the
past eighteen years of legislation continues to allow the issue of child
support system to blight the society we live in. More than ever “the onus is
now firmly on the government….to bring forward legislation to provide a
genuinely fresh start for child support.”2
Recently, the Government announced that they would “reform the system to
encourage families to reach their own solution on contact and maintenance
wherever possible. However, where parents are not able to make maintenance
arrangements themselves the Government will provide a strong and cost-
effective service to transfer money to support children.”3 This proposal forms
part of the new move towards “the Henshaw model”4 and further develops
1 Wikeley, N ‘Child Support- Back to the Drawing Board?’ [2006] Fam Law 312 , at 314
2 Wikeley, N ‘Case Commentary: A Duty but not a Right: Child Support after R (Keh oe) v
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions’ [2006] 18 (2) CFLQ 287, at 302
3 Green Paper Strengthening Families, Promoting Financial Responsi bility: The Future of
Child Maintenance (2011) Cm 7990, at p. 17
4 Wikeley, N ‘Child Support Reform- Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater ?’ [2007] 19
(4) CFLQ 434, at 456
I

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