Maintenance for a child: amount and payment

Whether you are separated or divorced, you must contribute to the upbringing and upbringing of your child (born during or out of wedlock, or adopted), even if you are of age.

The purpose of maintenance is to help the parent, with whom the child usually resides, or the person to whom the child is entrusted, to cover the costs of everyday life (clothing, schooling, leisure...) or more exceptional situations (medical expenses, hospitalization).

It is determined according to the resources of both parents and the needs of the child (age, health, disability...).

A parent can:

• to pay support to the other parent with whom the child ordinarily resides or to the person to whom the child is entrusted, or
• or to benefit from it.

Only the parent who justifies before the court that he cannot meet this obligation may, exceptionally, be exempted from it.

The amount of the pension is determined according to the income of the two parents, their expenses and the needs of the child. The elements taken into account include:

• Tax Notice (where pay slips + property income appear)
• Documents to establish the extent of your movable, real estate...

There is an indicative schedule of amounts to which the judge and the persons concerned may refer.

A computation simulator is also available:

Maintenance calculation simulator

Support may be paid in various forms.

In the majority of cases, this involves the payment of a sum of money every month, by check or by transfer (depending on what has been decided in the agreement or in the judgment).

However, support payments may take other forms:

• Direct support for your child's expenses
• Amount of money administered by an organization that provides the child with an indexed annuity (i.e., a periodic payment based on a benchmark)
• Enjoyment of property (example: housing)
• Assignment of income-producing property to your child (examples: a rental property, rented farmland).

In general, you have to pay maintenance from the day fixed either in the judgment or in the agreement (between 1^er and the 15th of each month). .

The payment of the pension does not automatically cease on the majority of your child. It continues until it becomes financially self-sufficient, including until the end of its studies. It may also continue for a child with a disability and a protected major.

Your adult child may be separated or divorced, to apply for maintenance to the family court judge on whose domicile he or she depends.

If the other parent does not pay you support, you can:

• Send him notice, by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, to pay you the amounts due.
  In that letter, you can remind him of his obligations and tell him that if he does not regularize the situation, a overlay forced may be exercised.

• Implement one of the following actions:
  
  • entrust the recovery to the Cfa (or the AMM),
  • Hire a direct payment procedure by using a commissioner of justice (formerly bailiff and judicial auctioneer),
  • Request a bank account seizure, following a court decision by the Jaf
  • Use financial intermediation of maintenance (IFPA)

• With a court decision setting the amount of maintenance, force it to pay you the amounts due

In any case, you can seek advice from a lawyer.