Section 28: Additional special case
This section inserts a new sub-paragraph (g) into Article 39(2) of the Child Support (Northern Ireland) Order 1991.
Article 39 enables the Department to prescribe cases as ‘special cases’ for the purposes of the Order, and subsequently to make regulations concerning those special cases.
New sub-paragraph (g) will include as a ‘special case’ the circumstances where two parents of the same children each have care for one or more of those children, and so each parent is both a parent with care and a non-resident parent.
Currently in these circumstances, each parent will be required to make a maintenance payment to the other. The new provision will allow for the offset of maintenance liabilities between the two parents, so that only the parent with the highest liability will actually make a payment.