58% of parents pursuing child maintenance payments must resort to court orders
More than half of parents must pursue child maintenance payments through an "adversarial" court system, while 42% of primary carers are raising children without a financial contribution from the other parent.
With 58% of parents resorting to a court order to agree on child maintenance, a new national survey finds a child’s needs do not determine the amount paid in 91% of cases included in the study.
The survey, which had 1,063 respondents, also found that 62% of primary carers believe the direct collection of child maintenance from the other parent's salary or earnings would be helpful to ensure regular payment. In cases where child maintenance is being paid, 75% of primary carers said it is paid on time.
The findings are included in a survey carried out by OneFamily, Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting and separation, which is now calling for the introduction of a statutory child maintenance agency.
The “thorny” issue of child maintenance has been ignored for too long by governments who have been “happy to leave it to parents and courts to battle it out”, according to Karen Kieran, chief executive of OneFamily.
This is not working for anyone as children and parents can end up financially worse off or abused. Our courts are jammed delivering maintenance orders that they cannot enforce, and we are again decades behind our neighbours across Europe.
While 34% of the cases surveyed were settled amicably, and 8% progressed to mediation, many parents were forced to turn to the Irish courts to deal with payment orders, access, custody and well-being arrangements.
However, the court’s current administrative infrastructure is a "direct barrier" to abused parents and their children accessing child maintenance and delays are an "inherent" part of the court proceedings, One Family finds.
In cases of coercive control, domestic violence and abuse, child maintenance processes can also exacerbate hostilities.
With the Courts Service receiving almost 9,000 applications for maintenance orders during 2018, more than a quarter of these cases remained unresolved by the end of the court term.
Launching its position paper on child maintenance, One Family has called for a future-proofed, independent child maintenance service, given that families and work patterns are rapidly changing.
According to the organisation, this would see the establishment of an independent agency that would integrate all the requirements of families and children accessing the family law courts and social services.
Such a service should also work to normalize the process of establishing child maintenance when a relationship breaks down.
Ms Kieran said: "What we need is a statutory child maintenance agency as part of a comprehensive Court Welfare Service that can determine appropriate levels to be paid in a fair child-centred way; that has the ability to ensure that children and families actually receive the maintenance and removes this issue from our adversarial courts system.”
One Family believes that child maintenance should be seen as an independent and ring-fenced form of support directly for children. "As with Government’s construal of the role of child benefit, it should not be taxed or means-tested, as is the case in the UK."
