Can the court order global maintenance?

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away the Thatcher Government fixed its sights on child maintenance. In January 1990 in what was to be her last year in office Mrs Thatcher (as she then was) spoke about the scandal that ‘…nearly four out of five lone mothers claiming income support received no maintenance from the fathers. No father should be able to escape from his responsibility and that is why the Government is looking at ways of strengthening the system for… making the arrangements for recovering maintenance more effective’ (National Children’s Homes Memorial Lecture 17 January 1990).

The Government proposals were duly set out in Children Come First which promoted the creation of a statutory agency (the Child Support Agency (CSA)) to administer child maintenance in a modern and efficient way. Section 8(3) of what was to become the Child Support Act 1991 removed the power of the court to deal with child maintenance in cases where the CSA had jurisdiction save for where one of the handful of exceptions at s 8(6)-(9) applied.

However the road to hell ...

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