The other parent stopped paying: child maintenance in four civil codes
Italy, France, Germany and Spain compared on child maintenance - the two variables that set the amount, why the duty does not stop at eighteen, the only code with a published scale, and why England, California and New York are missing.
The problem
After the separation, one parent stopped contributing to the children's costs. Sometimes the argument is about how much; sometimes it is about whether anything is owed at all now that a child has turned eighteen or started earning a little. The four civil codes here answer both questions, and they agree on more than people expect - including on the point that most payers get wrong. What they do not do is produce a number, and the three common-law jurisdictions that do produce numbers are the ones missing from this page.
What they agree on
All four codes make the amount a function of two things and refuse to reduce it to a formula. France's art. 371-2 states the calculus most compactly: each parent contributes to the child's maintenance and education 'a proportion de ses ressources, de celles de l'autre parent, ainsi que des besoins de l'enfant' - three inputs, not two, because the other parent's means count as well. France's general alimony rule in art. 208 says the same thing for maintenance obligations generally: aliments are granted only in proportion to the need of the person claiming and the fortune of the person who owes them. Italy's art. 337-ter starts from proportionality to each parent's income and then lists five criteria for setting a periodic sum. Spain's art. 93 requires the judge in every case to determine each parent's contribution and to adapt it to the parties' economic circumstances and the children's needs 'en cada momento'. Germany builds the same structure across several sections: § 1601 creates the duty, § 1602 requires need on one side, § 1603 requires capacity on the other.
All four also say, in one form or another, that the duty does not end when the child turns eighteen - and this is the half of the question people most often get wrong. France is the bluntest: art. 371-2 provides that the obligation 'ne cesse de plein droit ni lorsque l'autorite parentale ou son exercice est retire, ni lorsque l'enfant est majeur'. Italy's art. 337-septies allows the court to order a periodic sum for adult children who are not economically independent. Spain's art. 93 directs the judge, in the same decision, to fix maintenance for adult or emancipated children without their own income who live in the family home, under arts. 142 and following. Germany's § 1601 duty carries no age limit at all, and § 1603(2) sentence 2 puts unmarried children up to the age of twenty-one on the same footing as minors while they live at home and are in general school education.
And none of them lets a parent simply stop. Every one of these systems contemplates a decision or an agreement to change what is owed. Ceasing to pay because a child has had a birthday, or found some work, is not an exercise of a right any of these articles confers.
Where they part company
| Jurisdiction | What its law does | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Italia | Italy's list of criteria includes an item that is invisible in the other three. Art. 337-ter directs the judge, when setting a periodic sum, to consider the child's current needs, the standard of living enjoyed while living with both parents, the time spent with each parent, the economic resources of both - and 'la valenza economica dei compiti domestici e di cura assunti da ciascun genitore', the economic value of the domestic and caring work each parent takes on. | It converts unpaid care into an input in the calculation rather than a matter of fairness in the background. France's art. 371-2 counts resources and needs; Spain's art. 93 counts economic circumstances and needs; Germany's § 1612a counts age. Only Italy puts a value on the caring itself when setting the cash figure. |
| Italy also gives the court an investigative power that nothing else here matches. Art. 337-ter: the sum is automatically adjusted to the ISTAT indices unless another parameter is set by the parties or the judge, and where the parents' financial information is not sufficiently documented the judge orders an investigation by the tax police 'sui redditi e sui beni oggetto della contestazione, anche se intestati a soggetti diversi'. | Assets registered in someone else's name are expressly within reach. The other three codes leave the proof of income to the ordinary rules of evidence, so a parent facing an undocumented claim of poverty in Italy has a statutory route that a parent in the same position in France, Spain or Germany does not. | |
| Italy decides who receives the money once the child is an adult, which the other three do not address. Art. 337-septies: the periodic sum for an adult child who is not economically independent is, 'salvo diversa determinazione del giudice', paid directly to the person entitled - the child, not the parent he lives with. The last paragraph applies the whole regime for minors 'integralmente' to adult children with a severe disability. | It is a small rule with large practical consequences, because it changes who controls the money and who can enforce the order. Spain's art. 93 second paragraph, by contrast, keeps the adult child's maintenance inside the same judicial decision between the parents; France and Germany leave the point to their general rules. | |
| France | France attaches the obligation to parenthood rather than to parental authority, and says so. Art. 371-2 second sentence: the obligation does not cease of right 'ni lorsque l'autorite parentale ou son exercice est retire'. | A parent stripped of parental authority in France still pays. This is stated in the text rather than left to inference, and it forecloses an argument that is otherwise available in systems where the duty and the authority are described together. |
| The French yardstick is 'fortune', not income. Art. 208 measures the obligation by the need of the claimant and the fortune of the debtor, which the French page reads as taking in capital, savings, income-producing assets and the debtor's real outgoings, on both sides of the equation. | Because the same article governs maintenance between relatives generally, an adult French child claiming from a parent and a French parent claiming from a child are measured on the same scale. The reciprocity is structural in France and in Germany - § 1601 makes relatives in the direct line owe each other maintenance, in both directions, without limit up or down - and it is why the same provisions surface in disputes about elderly parents' care costs. | |
| Deutschland | Germany is the only one of the four with a legislated scale, and it deliberately keeps the figures out of the code. § 1612a(1) gives a minor child not living in the paying parent's household the right to claim maintenance as a percentage of the Mindestunterhalt, which follows the child's tax-free subsistence minimum: 87 per cent to the end of the sixth year of life, 100 per cent from the seventh to the end of the twelfth, and 117 per cent from the thirteenth. § 1612a(2) requires the percentage to be cut to one decimal place and the resulting sum rounded up to whole euros. § 1612a(4) leaves the Mindestunterhalt itself to be fixed by ministerial regulation every two years. | Italy, France and Spain publish no staircase of this kind. The German design also explains why no euro figure appears in § 1612a, and why the Dusseldorfer Tabelle is not law: it is guidance produced by the higher regional courts, built on this section and extended by income bracket. One detail catches people out - § 1612a(3) moves the child into the higher bracket from the beginning of the month in which the relevant year of life is completed, not at the next new year, which happens automatically under a dynamic title and silently fails to happen under a fixed one. |
| Germany is also the only one that states when the payer owes nothing. § 1603(1): a person is not liable for maintenance if, taking his other obligations into account, he is unable to provide it without endangering his own reasonable maintenance - the source of the Selbstbehalt. | France's art. 208 reaches a similar result from the other end by measuring the obligation against the debtor's 'fortune', so an impecunious debtor can be ordered to pay little or nothing. But only Germany states the exemption as a rule about the payer, and only Germany then takes it away again for children. | |
| The counter-rule has no analogue in the other three codes. § 1603(2): parents who are in that position are nonetheless obliged, as against their minor children, 'alle verfugbaren Mittel zu ihrem und der Kinder Unterhalt gleichmassig zu verwenden' - the gesteigerte Unterhaltspflicht. Sentence 2 extends it to unmarried children up to twenty-one living at home in general schooling. Sentence 3 gives it two exceptions: it does not apply where another liable relative exists, nor against a child whose maintenance can be met out of the capital of his own assets. | The effect is that in Germany the ordinary defence of inability is materially weakened where minor children are concerned - the payer is expected to deploy everything available and, in practice, his full earning capacity. Italy, France and Spain contain no equivalent intensification, so the poverty of the payer operates in those systems as it does for any other maintenance claim. | |
| None of the four publishes a scale with the force of law, including the one that looks like it does. § 1612a delegates the figures to a regulation; the Dusseldorfer Tabelle is court guidance built on it, as is the Selbstbehalt, which appears in the courts' guidelines and not in § 1603. The French reference tables are described on the French page as indicative and not binding. Italy and Spain give criteria only, and both pages say the article contains no percentages. | A reader who wants to know what they will pay will not find it in any of these eight provisions. That is not an oversight in the drafting - all four systems chose a proportionality standard over a formula - and it is the structural reason why the three jurisdictions in this comparison that do use formulas are absent from this page. | |
| España | Spain is the only one that defines what maintenance is. Art. 142: everything indispensable for 'el sustento, habitacion, vestido y asistencia medica', plus the education and instruction of the recipient while a minor 'y aun despues cuando no haya terminado su formacion por causa que no le sea imputable', plus the expenses of pregnancy and birth so far as not otherwise covered. | Housing is expressly inside the concept, which matters when the argument is about whether a particular cost is covered by the periodic sum or is extraordinary. And the education limb carries its own condition - the training continues to be funded only while the delay in finishing it is not the child's own fault, which is the hinge on which Spanish disputes about a twenty-four-year-old student turn. |
| The three codes gate the adult child differently, and the gates barely overlap. Spain's art. 93 second paragraph applies where adult or emancipated children without their own income 'convivieran en el domicilio familiar' - cohabitation is the trigger. Italy's art. 337-septies applies to adult children who are 'non indipendenti economicamente' and says nothing about where they live. Germany's privileged-adult rule in § 1603(2) sentence 2 requires four things at once: unmarried, under twenty-one, living in a parent's household, and in general school education. | A twenty-year-old who has moved out to study is inside the Italian rule, outside the Spanish one on its own terms, and outside the German privileged category - though not outside the German duty itself, which § 1601 imposes without an age limit. Same young person, three different answers to the question of which rule applies. |
The provision in each country
Each card links to the page that reproduces the official text and explains it in that country's own language.
Italia Codice Civile
- Art. 337-ter Codice Civile Each parent contributes in proportion to income; where a periodic sum is needed the judge weighs five criteria including the economic value of each parent's caring work, indexes it to ISTAT, and may order a tax-police investigation of undocumented means.
- Art. 337-septies Codice Civile The court may order a periodic sum for adult children who are not economically independent, paid directly to the child unless the court decides otherwise - with the whole regime for minors applying in full to adult children with a severe disability.
France Code civil
- Art. 371-2 Code civil Each parent contributes in proportion to his own resources, the other parent's resources and the child's needs - and the obligation ends neither with the withdrawal of parental authority nor with the child's majority.
- Art. 208 Code civil Maintenance is granted only in proportion to the need of the person claiming it and the fortune of the person who owes it, and the court may of its own motion attach an index-variation clause.
Deutschland BGB
- § 1601 BGB Relatives in the direct line owe each other maintenance - in both directions and without limit up or down, so the same sentence carries child support and support for elderly parents. Siblings and in-laws owe nothing.
- § 1603 BGB No maintenance is owed by someone who cannot pay without endangering his own reasonable maintenance - except that parents in that position must still use all available means equally for themselves and their minor children.
- § 1612a BGB A minor child may claim maintenance as a percentage of the minimum maintenance - 87, 100 and 117 per cent in three age brackets - with the underlying figure fixed by regulation every two years rather than stated in the code.
España Código Civil
- Artículo 93 del Código Civil The judge must in every case determine each parent's contribution and keep it adapted to the parties' means and the children's needs at any given time - and in the same decision fix maintenance for adult children without income living at home.
- Artículo 142 del Código Civil Maintenance means everything indispensable for sustenance, housing, clothing and medical care, plus education while a minor and afterwards where the training is unfinished for a reason not attributable to the recipient, plus pregnancy and birth expenses.
Where there is no answer in the code
A jurisdiction listed here is a finding, not a gap. Either its answer lives outside the corpus — special legislation, case law, municipal rules — or its law simply has no such rule.
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United Kingdom
In law we don't carry
Child Support Act 1991
Child maintenance in England and Wales is assessed administratively by the Child Maintenance Service under the Child Support Act 1991 formula, and the courts are largely ousted from setting the amount. Nothing in the UK corpus answers the question 'how much'. The lookup reached for Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 ss. 23 and 25, which are the financial provision and property powers between spouses, not the child maintenance calculation - so the absence here is a real feature of English law rather than a gap in the corpus.
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California
In law we don't carry
Family Code § 4055
California's guideline formula is Family Code § 4055, which has no page in this corpus. The lookup returned §§ 3010 and 3028, neither of which is a page and neither of which is about the amount of support. The contrast with the civil codes is the point: California legislates an algebraic formula where Italy, France, Spain and Germany legislate a proportionality standard.
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New York
In law we don't carry
DRL § 240(1-b)
New York's percentages are in Domestic Relations Law § 240(1-b), the Child Support Standards Act, which has no page here. The lookup found DRL § 244, which turns arrears into a money judgment, and § 248 - both enforcement provisions rather than provisions about the amount. New York therefore appears in this corpus on the question of collecting child support and not on the question of setting it.
That's the law in seven places. Now let's settle your problem.
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This page compares provisions of several legal systems in general terms and links to the official text of each. It is not legal advice, it does not tell you which country's law governs your situation, and it takes no account of the circumstances of your case. For a live dispute, consult a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction concerned.