The Jobseeker’s Allowance Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1996

Chapter VIII Child Support

Interpretation

125.  In this Chapter—

“child support maintenance” means such periodical payments as are referred to in Article 4(6) of the Child Support Order;

“maintenance assessment” has the same meaning as in Article 2(2) of the Child Support Order.

Treatment of child support maintenance

126.  Subject to regulation 127 (disregard of payments treated as not relevant income) all payments of child support maintenance shall to the extent that they are not payments of income be treated as income and shall be taken into account on a weekly basis in accordance with regulations 127 to 129.

Disregard of payments treated as not relevant income

127.  Where the Department treats any payment of child support maintenance as not being relevant income for the purposes of section 72A of the Administration Act(1) (payment of benefit where maintenance payments collected by Department), that payment shall be disregarded in calculating a claimant’s income.

Calculation of the weekly amount of child support maintenance

128.—(1) The weekly amount of child support maintenance shall be calculated in accordance with paragraphs (2) to (6).

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

(3) Where payments of child support maintenance are made monthly, the weekly amount shall 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 shall be determined by dividing that payment 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 shall be the weekly amount of the individual child support maintenance payments so commutated as calculated in accordance with paragraphs (2) to (4) as appropriate.

(6) Paragraph (2), (3) or, as the case may be, (4) shall 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, and

(b) the intervals at which the payments are made are in accordance with the intervals specified by the Department under regulation 4 of the Child Support (Collection and Enforcement) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1992(2) (interval of payment).

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) in the case of a payment which is due to be made before the benefit week in which the claimant first became entitled to an income-based jobseeker’s allowance, 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 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) For the purposes of paragraph (1), where a payment of child support maintenance is due to be made under an instalment or other agreement on a date which is not the date which it was originally due under the maintenance assessment (“the original date”), it shall be treated as if it was due to be made on the original date.

(1)

Section 72A was inserted by Article 18 of the Child Support (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 (S.I. 1995/2702 (N.I. 13))

(2)

S.R. 1992 No. 390; regulation 4 was amended by regulation 4(2) of S.R. 1995 No. 162