This will depend on how much each of you needs to make ends meet.

It is a balancing exercise. There is no magic formula. If there is a short-fall, the question is how much your spouse can afford to pay after meeting his/her own needs or how much your spouse can manage on after you have met your own needs.

The question is usually resolved by going through in detail the outgoings of each household. It is then a question of trimming items of expenditure to a lower figure or excluding those that may not be absolutely necessary in an effort to get a quart out of a pint pot.

If one of the spouses is only working on a part-time basis or is not working at all, it may be necessary to look at his/her earning capacity to see if he or she could earn more. Often it will be a case of balancing that against the cost and practicalities of looking after children, particularly during the school holidays.

Maintenance can always be varied upwards or downwards if circumstances change – for the person paying it or for the person receiving it.

For example, if the maintenance payer loses his/her job, then it is likely that he or she will make an application to court for the maintenance to be reduced substantially, perhaps to a nominal level.