The biggest changes to the child support system in more than 20 years have been signed off in Parliament today and will come into place in April next year.
The changes include the formula for calculating child support payments to include both parents' income and changes to payment, penalties and debt write-off.
Debt from unpaid child support sits at $2.6 billion and 60 per cent of that is from overdue penalty payments.
Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said the current system focused too heavily on penalties and people were not coming forward to the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) to make payments.
The Child Support Amendment Bill passed a third reading today.