Download our February 2013 discussion paper on child maintenance.

This paper provides a brief overview of the history of child maintenance, including the Child Support Act (1991), the Henshaw Report and 2008 reforms, and the current Coalition Government proposals to reframe the child maintenance landscape.

The paper also examines research around parental behaviours in relation to the willingness and ability to agree and enact child maintenance agreements and suggests that, not only are the current statutory maintenance, benefit and tax regulations iniquitous, but that child maintenance may only play a marginal role in the alleviation of child poverty.

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