How is child maintenance calculated?

There is no formula and no standard amount. Anyone who tells you that maintenance is a fixed percentage of a salary is guessing. Under the Maintenance Act 99 of 1998, a court works out what the child reasonably needs each month, and then divides that cost between the parents in proportion to what each of them can actually afford.

That is the whole method. Needs on one side, means on the other. Everything else is detail about how you prove each of them.

Both parents owe the duty

Both parents have a legal duty to maintain their child. It does not depend on whether you were married, whether you live together, or whether you see the child. It is not something a parent can trade away in exchange for giving up contact.

The duty is shared in proportion to means, not split down the middle. A parent who earns considerably more will usually be expected to carry a considerably larger share of the child's costs.

The parent the child lives with is also contributing. Courts recognise that daily care, housing the child, cooking, transport and time off work have real value, even though no money changes hands. That contribution is weighed in the balance.

Step one: the child's reasonable needs

The starting point is a monthly budget for the child, not for the household. You list what the child actually costs and you prove it. Typically that includes:

• food and household groceries attributable to the child
• clothing and school uniforms
• school fees, registration, books, stationery and outings
• aftercare or a creche
• transport to school and back
• medical aid contributions and expenses the medical aid does not cover
• toiletries, hair and personal care
• cellphone and data where the child is old enough to need one
• sport, extramurals and equipment
• a share of rent or bond, water, electricity and domestic help

The last one is the item people forget. A share of the household costs is properly part of the child's needs, because the child has to be housed.

"Reasonable" is doing work in that phrase. The court looks at what this child needs, given the standard of living the family can sustain, not at the most expensive version of every item.

Step two: each parent's means

Means is wider than a payslip. A court will look at your income from all sources, your reasonable living expenses, your assets, and your earning capacity.

Earning capacity is important. A parent who resigns, works cash in hand or arranges to be paid through a company to look poor on paper is not usually believed. Courts can look at lifestyle, at the car in the driveway and at bank statements, and can draw conclusions where the numbers do not add up.

Your own reasonable expenses are taken into account, but your child's needs generally rank ahead of your discretionary spending. New debt taken on after separation rarely reduces a maintenance obligation.

Step three: apportioning the cost

Once the court knows the monthly cost of the child and what each parent can afford, it divides the cost in proportion to means. If one parent's income makes up roughly two thirds of the parents' combined available income, that parent would usually be expected to carry roughly two thirds of the child's monthly costs, adjusted for the care the other parent provides in kind.

There is no fixed answer, because there is no fixed input. Two families with identical salaries can end up with different orders because their children's needs differ.

Our maintenance estimator can help you sanity check your own figures and build the budget you will need at court. Treat the result as illustrative only. It is a working tool for your own planning, not a prediction of what a magistrate will order.

How to apply, for free

You apply at the Maintenance Court, which sits in the Magistrates' Court, in the district where you or the child lives. The process is free. You do not need an attorney and you do not need to have been married.

Take with you:

• your identity document
• the child's birth certificate
• proof of your income, usually three months of payslips and bank statements
• your monthly budget for the child, with receipts, invoices and statements
• the other parent's full name, address, identity number and employer if you know them
• any existing court order or written agreement

A maintenance officer opens the file and investigates. A maintenance investigator can obtain financial information about the other parent. If the two of you agree on an amount, it can be made a consent order there and then. If not, the matter goes to a formal enquiry before a magistrate, who hears both sides and makes an order.

An order can generally be backdated to the date you applied, so applying sooner rather than later matters.

Changing an order later

Maintenance is not fixed forever. Either parent can go back to the same Maintenance Court and apply to increase, reduce or substitute the order when circumstances change, for example a new job, a retrenchment, a new school or a serious illness.

Do not simply stop paying or start paying less because you think the amount is wrong. The order stands until a court changes it, and arrears build up in the meantime. See what to do if maintenance is not being paid.

When maintenance ends

Maintenance does not stop automatically on the child's eighteenth birthday. The duty continues while the child is not yet self-supporting, which often covers a child still at school or studying. A child over 18 can approach the Maintenance Court in their own name.

The duty ends when the child becomes self-supporting, and that is a question of fact rather than a birthday.