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Maintenance payments are payments made by a taxpayer to their former or separated spouse / civil partner for the maintenance of that person or their children. To obtain any tax relief for maintenance payments, one of the couple must have been born before 5 April 1935 and the payments must be made by virtue of a court order or an assessment by the Child Maintenance Service (formerly known as the Child Support Agency).

Maintenance payments are always paid gross (ie tax is not withheld at source by the payer) and they are not taxable in the hands of the recipient.

The payer receives tax relief via a 10% tax reduction on the lower of (a) the amount paid and (b) £4,360 for the 2025/26 tax year (£4,280 for 2024/25).

Note that although maintenance payments were considered by the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) as part of its review of pensioner taxation, due to the natural decline in the number of claimants, it was decided that simplification of this relief was not a priority. Consequently, it was not taken