Secure Your Child’s Future with Reliable Child Maintenance Services
Both parents have a legal duty to maintain children. Maintenance claims can take place in a variety of ways. It is not necessary that parents are married to institute a maintenance claim if a spouse to parent is not contributing to the maintenance of a child. If the parents are not married, the Maintenance Court is the correct forum to institute a maintenance complaint.
If the parents are married, maintenance is often claimed as part of the divorce proceedings in the Court in which the divorce proceedings have been instituted, this could also include interim maintenance claims pending the finalisation of the divorce. Even if the parents are married and divorce proceedings have not been instituted, the Maintenance Court can still be approached.
When calculating maintenance for children, there are a variety of factors that will be considered. Most importantly, the reasonable financial needs of the children will first be considered. The living arrangements and custody arrangements will also be considered, i.e. where the children spend most of their time. Lastly, the income of the parents will be considered. Once these factors have been considered, a calculation is performed to determine the extent to which each parent is required to contribute to the reasonable financial needs of the children.
An important factor to keep in mind that when a parent is failing to pay maintenance and no court order exists, you cannot claim backpay on maintenance. Therefore, if an issue of maintenance arises in respect of children, it is imperative to institute maintenance proceedings in the correct forum as soon as possible. Once an order is obtained and a parent fails to comply with such order, there are various mechanism available, including issuing warrants of execution, criminal complaints and garnishee orders to deduct maintenance from salaries from employers before the said salaries are paid to the defaulting parent.
The maintenance application process can take time and thus the sooner these proceedings are instituted when there is a dispute the better.
The procedure in the Maintenance Court’s can be difficult to navigate and the assistance of a Family Attorney is beneficial in this process.
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