ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on maintenance for children. A person can be liable for a child either because he or she is their birth parent or adoptive parent, or because they have married the child's parent and have assumed responsibility for them. This chapter presents a checklist for students to help them to understand and apply the rules for various maintenance for children. These include the following: the role of private ordering and child maintenance and the fact that parents are encouraged to agree child maintenance, the development of child maintenance based on a biological or adoptive relationship with the child, and justifications for using the non-resident parent's income as the basis for the child maintenance and any problems. The chapter also presents two points for debates, a question on an arrangement under the Child Support Acts and Matrimonial Causes Act (MCA) 1973, the answer to this question and the application of the law.
