Privacy Policy
How we handle your data, explained in plain English
Last updated: 6 August 2026
Who we are
Child Maintenance Guide UK ("we", "us") operates the website at child-maintenance.com. We are the data controller for personal data collected through this website for the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
If you have any question about this policy or about how we handle your data, contact us through our contact page.
What data we collect
1. Information you give us directly
| What | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Name, email address, message | When you use the contact form | So we can read and reply to your enquiry |
| Email address | When you subscribe to updates | To send you occasional emails about CMS changes |
| Email address, username, password | When you register for the community forum | To create and secure your account |
| Posts and replies you write | When you post in the forum | To publish them on the forum, where they are public |
2. Information collected automatically
Like almost every website, our hosting provider and analytics tools record some technical information when you visit: your IP address, browser type and version, device type, the pages you view, how long you spend on them, and the site or search term that brought you here. This is used to understand which guides are useful and to keep the site secure and working.
3. What we deliberately do not collect
Our net pay calculator and every tool under our tools sectionrun entirely inside your browser using JavaScript. Your income, your children's details, your shared care nights, your arrears figures and any letter text you generate are never transmitted to our servers and never stored by us. If you close the tab, that data is gone. We designed the tools this way on purpose, because the information people enter into them is highly sensitive.
We do not ask for and do not want your National Insurance number, your CMS case reference number, bank details, or any document containing them. Please do not send these to us.
Our legal basis for processing
Under UK GDPR we must have a lawful basis for using your personal data. Ours are:
- Consent for marketing emails and for any non-essential cookies, including analytics and advertising. You can withdraw consent at any time.
- Legitimate interests for replying to enquiries, running and securing the website, and understanding aggregate traffic patterns so we can improve our guides.
- Performance of a contract for creating and maintaining a forum account you have asked for.
- Legal obligation where we are required to retain or disclose information by law.
Cookies and similar technologies
We use a small number of cookies and browser storage entries. Non-essential cookies are blocked until you consent through the banner shown on your first visit. We operate Google Consent Mode v2, which means Google's tags are loaded in a denied state by default and only receive consent once you grant it.
Full details of every cookie we set, and how to change your mind, are in our Cookie Policy.
Advertising
This site carries advertising in order to stay free to use. We work with Google, including Google AdSense. Third party vendors including Google use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this or other websites.
Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to our site and other sites on the internet. You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings, or opt out of a third party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info.
If you decline advertising cookies through our banner, you will still see ads, but they will be non-personalised.
Affiliate links
Some pages, particularly in our legal services section, contain affiliate links. If you click one and go on to buy a service, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. These links are marked, and the click is recorded by the partner so the referral can be attributed. We never receive your personal details from a partner as a result of a click. Commercial relationships do not influence our editorial recommendations, as set out in our editorial policy.
Who we share data with
We do not sell your personal data. We never have and we never will. We share data only with the service providers that make the site work:
| Provider | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Vercel | Website hosting and delivery |
| Supabase | Forum accounts and forum post storage |
| Resend | Sending contact form emails and newsletter delivery |
| Google (Analytics, Tag Manager, Ads, AdSense) | Traffic measurement and advertising, subject to your consent |
Some of these providers process data outside the UK. Where they do, transfers are covered by UK adequacy regulations or by standard contractual clauses with appropriate safeguards.
We may also disclose information if we are legally required to do so, or where it is necessary to protect the safety of a person, which includes situations where a forum post suggests someone is at risk of serious harm.
How long we keep it
- Contact form messages: up to 24 months, so we can follow up on ongoing correspondence.
- Newsletter subscribers: until you unsubscribe. Every email has a one click unsubscribe link.
- Forum accounts and posts: until you ask us to delete the account. Posts may be retained in anonymised form so that conversations remain readable for other parents.
- Analytics data:retained according to Google's standard retention settings, currently 14 months.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
- Ask what personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it
- Have inaccurate data corrected
- Have your data erased, often called the right to be forgotten
- Restrict or object to how we process your data
- Receive your data in a portable, machine readable format
- Withdraw consent at any time, including for marketing emails
To exercise any of these, contact us through the contact page. We will respond within one month. There is no charge.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.
Children
This site is written for adults dealing with the child maintenance system. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.
Security
The site is served over HTTPS, forum passwords are hashed and never stored in readable form, and our form endpoints are rate limited and sanitised to protect against abuse. No system is perfectly secure, but we take the protection of the limited data we hold seriously.
Changes to this policy
We update this policy when our practices change. The date at the top shows when it was last revised. Material changes will be flagged on the site.