A Quick Breakdown: What is Child Maintenance in South Africa?
Child maintenance – also known as child support – is a legal obligation for both parents to financially contribute to their child’s upbringing. It’s not optional, and it’s not based on how much contact a parent has. The child’s right to maintenance is protected by law.
It really should be common knowledge, right?
You help create a child – you help care for that child.
📝 What is the process for applying?
- Go to your nearest Magistrate’s Court (Maintenance Court section).
- Complete the maintenance application form (Download it Here)– bring your ID, children’s birth certificates, bank statements, proof of income and expenses, and any documents relating to your child’s needs. Also, settlement agreement / divorce decree (in the case of a divorce).
- A maintenance officer sets a date for an inquiry, and the other parent is summoned.
- If no agreement is reached at the inquiry, the matter goes to a formal trial.
- Evidence is presented, and a magistrate makes a ruling based on the child’s needs and both parents’ financial capacity.
🤯 Why Does It Get So Complicated?
- Some parents lie about income, hide assets, or stop working to avoid responsibility.
- Lawyers can delay matters, especially if only one party has legal representation. “Due legal process” can become a tool that drags things out, often at the expense of the children.
💡 How Is Maintenance Calculated?
It’s not just a random number – it’s based on proportional responsibility.
Here’s how it typically works:
Each adult is considered as 1 full part, and each child counts as half a part.
So let’s look at accommodation rental of R5000 per month and say a parent has primary custody and 2 children live with that parent. The adult part equals 1 and the children together make up 1 full part (0.5 + 0.5).
Since they account for half of the household (1 part out of 2), R2,500 of that rent is attributed to the children.
So the other parent would owe half of the children’s portion (R1,250 in this case), even if the other parent doesn’t live there.
Now calculate all the other areas of maintenance:
- Education & school supplies
- Medical aid & costs
- Groceries
- Clothing, shoes, toiletries
- Electricity, water, wifi
- Transport
- Extracurriculars
You’d be surprised how quickly the numbers add up – and how often a parent underpays or avoids those costs.
🙋🏻♀️ My Story: The Week of the Final Maintenance Trial on Friday, 1 August.
That week was one long, emotional wrestle with a task I’d been avoiding: prepping the interrogation questions for our upcoming maintenance trial.
It wasn’t because I didn’t know what to ask – I knew. I just didn’t have the emotional capacity to do it. Every time I opened those documents, the weight of the injustice hit me again – the manipulation, the gaslighting, the emotional and financial abuse… not just toward me, but toward our girls too.
And the more I read, the heavier I felt.
I told myself I’d finish everything on Monday so I could focus on my actual work. End of the month = deadlines + bills. And with maintenance not being paid properly, the pressure was even worse. But Monday came and went.
Tuesday? Same story. I even tried to clear time for it, but work emergencies cropped up, and then a friend I planned to walk with postponed. We rescheduled for Wednesday – because she knew my eldest really wanted to see her dog – so I thought, “Okay, I’ll just get it all done in the morning.”
But I didn’t.
Instead, I finally got a call through to the maintenance office – I had been trying to get hold of them since the previous week. I wanted to confirm whether I needed to bring my own trial bundle copies, since last time the judge didn’t have a copy with him.
And wow… I’m so glad I kept calling.
Because I found out something major:
I couldn’t even claim the arrears I’d planned to highlight.
Apparently, I needed to submit a separate application for those. This trial was only to set the new maintenance order.
And just like that, I felt the wind knocked out of me.
I’d been waiting so long for that date. I’d made promises to people I owe money to because of the shortfalls, assuming this trial would address it all. I didn’t want to cry – my eldest was home – so I just swallowed the lump in my throat and whispered a quiet prayer to God: “Please show me what I’m not seeing – please guide me through this.”
That’s when it hit me.
My procrastination and inability to prepare for the trial wasn’t a delay – it was protection.
If I’d written those questions earlier that week, they would’ve been totally misaligned. That time and energy would’ve been wasted. Once again, God’s timing proved better than mine.
Just a short while later, I kept the rescheduled visit to our friend with the dog. We chatted, and she told me more about her work project. I mentioned my frustration about the trial and the call I’d just had.
Then, her husband walked in.
She asked him if he was able to listen to my situation.
And again, wow. Divine orchestration in full swing.
He offered me incredible insight. I sat there stunned – like God placed exactly who I needed in that room at the exact moment. My alarm went off to fetch my youngest from aftercare, but I asked for a moment. I needed to release.
I went to the bathroom, dropped to my knees, and sobbed.
The kind of cry where the lumps in your throat become tears on the floor.
I washed my face. Took a deep breath. Composed myself.
God is so good.
Every single piece of that week: every delay, every call I missed, every postponed plan – it was all part of something deeper. Something protective. Divinely timed. Had I done things my way, I would’ve burnt out and gone to trial with the wrong focus.
But God…
He knew. And He held space for me to figure it out in alignment with His plan.
I knew then how to approach the trial correctly. I was emotionally clear and spiritually grounded. I was grateful that a final order was granted.
✨ Lessons, Tips & Things You Should Know
- Arrears must be filed separately.
Unless explicitly included in the summons, maintenance arrears are NOT handled in your application for maintenance trial. This could be confusing if your maintenance application took a long time to enforce and there was already arrears from the interim order. You must make a separate application.
- Lifestyle expenses can only be considered in divorce court.
Even though one parent may be living lavishly while underpaying, maintenance court won’t look at lifestyle unless it’s raised within a divorce trial. That was something I was made aware of before but needed to separate the two so that I could at least get divorced and be released from the community of property bond. So if you’re pursuing maintenance separately, you’ll only be dealing with needs and affordability.
3. Bring 4 printed copies of your bundle.
1 for you, 1 for the magistrate, 1 for the other party, and 1 for the maintenance officer.
- Be prepared: the interrogation can feel personal.
Maintenance clerks are tasked with checking the truth of your claims. It can feel like you’re being judged – why you spend what you spend, how much groceries cost – but they’re just doing their job.
- Don’t assume having a lawyer is always better.
Personally, I did both my divorce and maintenance trial without much input from lawyers. Not because I couldn’t access help – but because it helped me heal while I prepared. It felt wrong to see someone use maintenance money to pay a lawyer just to avoid accountability. That’s not what this is meant to be about.
📚 A Quote That Grounded Me
As I sat outside court before my earlier trial, re-reading The Alchemist, this line stopped me in my tracks:
THE ALCHEMIST – PAULO COELHO
“Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else.”
It calmed my heart.
❤️ In Closing
Applying for maintenance is not about money.
It’s about responsibility.
It’s about accountability.
It’s about the wellbeing of the children we brought into this world.
If you’re in the process of applying for maintenance or preparing for trial, please don’t give up. The system is slow. The process is draining. But your child deserves support. And you deserve peace.
And if delays come, interruptions happen, or the timing feels off… maybe, just maybe, it’s divine.
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