ENGLAND & WALES Law and Practice Contributed by: Jeremy Levison, Miranda Green and Alexander Bartlett, Levison Meltzer Pigott
• how capable each of their parents, and any other person in relation to whom the court considers the question to be relevant, is of meeting their needs; and • the range of powers available to the court. Parental Responsibility and Contact Arrangements Parental responsibility refers to the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority that a parent of a child has. Common examples include the ability to determine where a child should live, the name of that child, as well as decisions regarding their schooling and medical treatments. A child’s mother shall automatically obtain parental responsibility upon a child’s birth. In the case of a father, it is commonly acquired by marriage to the mother (before or after the birth), or upon being named as the father on the child’s birth certificate. It is also possible to assign parental responsibility by way of an agreement between the parents or by an order of the court. Such an order must be made when a court makes an order that a child shall live with (as opposed to spend time with) a father who did not previously have parental responsibility. There exists a presumption in deciding contact arrangements that, unless the contrary is shown, the involvement of both parents in the child’s life, whether that is direct or indirect contact, will further that child’s welfare. That presumption has been the subject of recent criticism on the basis that it risks promoting the furtherance of abusive relationship dynamics. In October 2025, the Ministry of Justice published a review of this presumption in which it concluded that there were several cases in which courts were order ‑ ing direct contact notwithstanding indicators of risk. Thus, the presumption, or at least the way it was being applied in practice, risked causing harm to children’s welfare by reducing focus on the individual circum ‑ stances of each case. The report therefore recom ‑ mended that the presumption be removed. Restrictions on the Court’s Power A court’s powers to make orders with regards to con ‑ tact arrangements are restricted to “children”. A court cannot make an order relating to contact arrange ‑
ments after a child has reached the age of sixteen unless there are exceptional circumstances. It is pos ‑ sible for an order that a child lives with a parent to extend until the age of eighteen, but no order may
extend beyond that. Child Maintenance
In many cases, jurisdiction for child maintenance lies with the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). A pre ‑ scribed formula is applied to provide an amount that the parent with whom the child spends less time shall pay to the other parent. A CMS calculator applying the formula can be found easily online and parties are often able to reach a voluntary agreement without the formal involvement of the CMS. There are circumstances in which the court retains jurisdiction to deal with orders of child maintenance payments. The most common examples are when a parent resides outside the jurisdiction or earns in excess of £156,000 gross per annum. The CMS may also refuse jurisdiction when parents have precisely equal care arrangements (though in practice there seems to be a considerable desire to bend over back ‑ wards to establish that one parent is in fact the non- resident parent, even when an order has been made providing for equal care arrangements). The 2023 case of James v Seymour offered up its own formulaic approach to be applied to incomes of between £156,000 and £650,000 per annum. While it is a helpful guide (which has been widely adopted), the court retains the discretion to consider a party’s income needs and to arrive at a figure that would be fair in all the circumstances of the case. It is also possible for the court to endorse an agree ‑ ment between parties as to what the level of child maintenance should be, notwithstanding that those parties would normally fall within the jurisdiction of the CMS. However, such orders will only oust the jurisdic ‑ tion of the CMS for a period of 12 months. Schedule 1 Applications Applications made under Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989 (see also 2.6 Cohabitation: Division of Assets Between Unmarried Couples ) can be made by a parent on behalf of children for both periodical
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