Practice area: Maintenance obligations
Set it, adjust it, or make sure it actually gets paid.
Contributions for children, maintenance after divorce, support between spouses: each maintenance obligation follows its own rules. I help you set them fairly, adjust them when life changes and enforce them when they go unpaid.
What this covers
Contribution, maintenance, support: three terms that are easy to mix up.
"Maintenance obligations" is a generic term covering several distinct realities. The maintenance contribution concerns children: it flows from parentage, is a matter of public policy and shares the costs of upkeep and education between the parents, in proportion to their means.
Spousal maintenance concerns former spouses after the divorce and depends on whether the person claiming it is genuinely in need.
During the marriage itself, spouses owe each other support; spousal support is that legal duty put into practice.
Family members can also owe each other maintenance, for example towards an elderly parent in need.
None of these amounts is fixed for good: job loss, a new family composition or the growing needs of a teenager all justify a review.
And when the sums due are not paid, enforcement routes exist: attachments, orders for direct payment out of income, and above all SECAL, the Maintenance Claims Service. This fund, housed within the FPS Finance, advances unpaid contributions and itself pursues the defaulting parent, so that the decision does not remain unenforced.
Common situations
Setting the amount is only part of the story.
Whether you have to pay maintenance or to receive it, what is at stake is the same: an amount that is fair and actually paid.
Setting a maintenance contribution for the children
A range of factors has to be taken into account in order to comply with the requirements of Article 1321 of the Judicial Code.
- The combined means of the parents: their financial resources
- The budget for the child's ordinary costs and the method used to assess it
- The child's residence arrangements and each parent's contribution in kind
- The amount of child benefit
- The nature of the extraordinary expenses taken into account and the share each parent must bear, according to the list set by the Royal Decree of 22 April 2019
Maintenance across borders
The international recovery of maintenance.
The international recovery of maintenance claims is governed mainly by three international instruments, namely Council Regulation (EC) No 4/2009 of 18 December 2008 on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions and cooperation in matters relating to maintenance obligations, the Hague Convention of 23 November 2007 on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, and the Convention on the Recovery Abroad of Maintenance, done at New York on 20 June 1956.
In Belgium, the International Civil Cooperation Service established within the FPS Justice has been designated as the central authority for implementing the international instruments on maintenance obligations.
The Central Authority in Belgium is the point of contact both for a creditor in Belgium who wishes to make an application to recover maintenance arrears abroad and for a debtor who is on Belgian territory. The staff of the Central Authority handle applications according to language group, based on the address of the creditor or the debtor. The Belgian Central Authority can be contacted by email at aliments@just.fgov.be. The Belgian Central Authority works closely with lawyers on applications relating to maintenance obligations. The Belgian Central Authority is in direct contact with foreign Central Authorities, which act as intermediaries with the maintenance creditor or debtor.
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