The Employment and Support Allowance Regulations 2008

CHAPTER 9 Child support

Treatment of child support maintenance

127.  Subject to regulation 130 (disregard of payments treated as not relevant income), all payments of child support maintenance are, to the extent that they are not payments of income, to be treated as income and are to be taken into account on a weekly basis in accordance with the following provisions of this Chapter.

Calculation of the weekly amount of payments of child support maintenance

128.—(1) The weekly amount of child support maintenance is to be determined in accordance with the following provisions of this regulation.

(2) Where payments of child support maintenance are made weekly, the weekly amount is to be the amount of that payment.

(3) Where payments of child support maintenance are made monthly, the weekly amount is to be determined by multiplying the amount of the payment by 12 and dividing the product by 52.

(4) Where payments of child support maintenance are made at intervals and those intervals are not a week or a month, the weekly amount is to be determined by dividing those payments by the number equal to the number of weeks (including any part of a week) in that interval.

(5) Where a payment is made and that payment represents a commutation of child support maintenance the weekly amount is to be the weekly amount of the individual child support maintenance payments so commuted as calculated in accordance with paragraphs (2) to (4) as appropriate.

(6) Paragraph (2), (3) or, as the case may be, (4) is to apply to any payments made at the intervals specified in that paragraph whether or not—

(a) the amount paid is in accordance with the maintenance assessment or the maintenance calculation, as the case may be; and

(b) the intervals at which the payments are made are in accordance with the intervals specified by the Secretary of State under regulation 4 of the Child Support (Collection and Enforcement) Regulations 1992(1).

Date on which child support maintenance is to be treated as paid

129.—(1) Subject to paragraph (2), a payment of child support maintenance is to be treated as paid—

(a) subject to sub-paragraph (b), in the case of a payment which is due to be paid before the first benefit week pursuant to the claim, on the day in the week in which it is due to be paid which corresponds to the first day of the benefit week;

(b) in the case of any amount of a payment which represents arrears of maintenance for a week prior to the first benefit week pursuant to a claim, on the day of the week in which it became due which corresponds to the first day of the benefit week;

(c) in any other case, on the first day of the benefit week in which it is due to be paid or the first day of the first succeeding benefit week in which it is practicable to take it into account.

(2) Where a payment to which paragraph (1)(c) refers is made to the Secretary of State and then transmitted to the claimant entitled to receive it, the payment is to be treated as paid on the first day of the benefit week in which it is transmitted or, where it is not practicable to take it into account in that week, the first day of the first succeeding benefit week in which it is practicable to take the payment into account.

Disregard of payments treated as not relevant income

130.  Where the Secretary of State treats any payment of child support maintenance as not being relevant income for the purposes of section 74A of the Administration Act (payment of benefit where maintenance payments collected by Secretary of State), that payment is to be disregarded in calculating a claimant’s income.

(1)

S.I. 1992/1989, the relevant amending instrument is S.I. 1995/1045.