About Us
Making the Child Maintenance Service easier to see into
Child Maintenance Guide UK is a free, independent site for parents in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland dealing with the Child Maintenance Service.
Our mission: transparency
The CMS decides how much money moves between two households, and most parents on both sides of it cannot see how the decision was made. Letters arrive with a figure and no working. Phone lines give different answers on different days. The rules that produce your number sit in regulations most people will never read.
We exist to close that gap. Every figure on this site is traceable to the regulation, the DWP statistic or the HMRC rule it comes from. Where the official position is contested, we say so. Where the data does not exist, we say that too.
That means publishing things the official guidance leaves out. How much the CMS earns from Collect and Pay fees. How many liability orders are actually issued. Why a company director and a sole trader on identical profit get very different bills. What senior DWP officials told the House of Lords, and what their own figures show.
Who this is for
- Paying parents working out what they owe, why the figure is what it is, and what they can challenge
- Receiving parents working out what they are owed, and what to do when it does not arrive
- Both dealing with shared care, income changes, appeals, arrears or enforcement
The net pay calculator
The official calculator on GOV.UK asks for gross income. Almost nobody knows their gross income off the top of their head. People know what lands in their bank account.
Our net pay calculator works from your take-home pay. It uses current UK income tax and National Insurance rates to reconstruct your gross figure, then applies the official CMS percentages. You get a number you can sanity-check against your own payslip.
How we pay for this
The site carries advertising, and some links in our legal services section are affiliate links that pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. That never changes what we write or who we recommend. Our editorial policy sets out exactly where the money comes from and what it does not buy.
Is this advice?
No. This is general information, not legal or financial advice. The rules change and every case has details ours cannot know. For your own situation, speak to a family law solicitor or contact the CMS directly.
Are we connected to the government?
No. We have no affiliation with the Child Maintenance Service, the Department for Work and Pensions or any government body. We link to the official GOV.UK pages throughout and we would rather you checked.
Keeping it current
Every article shows a publication or last-updated date, and we revise them when rates and rules change. If something looks wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
Ready to find your answers?
Browse our articles or try our free net pay calculator.