Legal changes to child support in Germany

The German Government has been keeping itself quite busy, what with all the noise about a smoking ban, but another bit of leglislation has also been negociated which has pretty big consequences for many TTers - namely, child alimony.

And children have been placed at the centre.
All of the children.

Whereas up until now the first family's children had priority over any future family's children, now this has changed so that all children are to be treated the same.

Sounds complicated - well, this is the order of who gets to dig into the pot:

1. Children come first. Whether from a marriage, outside of a marriage, whatever, they come first.
2. Married/divorced caregivers claiming alimony
3. Unmarried caregivers claiming alimony

Now, this separation caused much discussion in the Größes Koalition, as the SPD wished to see the unmarried caregiver receive the same status as the (previously) married. The Union referred back to the Grundgesetz §6


And thus unmarried caregivers do not enjoy this protection. By the way, those in eingetragene Gemeinschaften (gay legal partnership agreements) are also not seen as being married in alimony terms either.

So what does this mean in practice?

Well, if you are a divorcee with a second family, your alimony payments may change as the children in your second family now have to be taken into account.

Which also means that should you be an ex-wife/-husband and caregiver dependent on alimony and your previous partner now has a new family, well, that alimony component may decrease. A time limit upon how long a primary care-giver dependent on alimony may claim can also be introduced if child care is remotely possible, the old rule of 8 years at home has now gone in end effect. This was done in order to get those primary care-givers to have more "self-determination" into their lives.

Bundesjustizminister Brigitte Zypries hoped that this change would mean that those due to pay up would therefore actually pay as studies show that "fathers would rather pay for the kids than the ex-wife".

Should you be affected by these changes or want to find out more, contact your local Jugendamt or seek legal advice.

ZDF.de
Tagesschau.de
TT child support threads

i have to admit, i read the post a few times & i still don't get it. if i, for example, get divorced & then take care of our children, my ex-husband pays me alimony & child support, but that if he gets remarried & has either new children or his new wife brings kids into the marriage, then my alimony payments will go down because he has to take care of his new family, but I would still get the same amount of child support? is child support completely separate then from alimony? or when you write child alimony you mean child support?

now it seems obvious that if i get remarried, that i would no longer be entitled to alimony from my ex, since now i got someone else to support me (if i am not working), but obvioulsy my ex husband would still pay child support.

but if i had a child with my unmarried boyfriend & we separate, he does not have to pay me any alimony, but now he does? same goes for same-sex couples?

I actually understood the exact opposite, i.e. that in these two cases the status quo (=no alimony) is maintained, but don't quote me, I'm not at all sure that I got it right!

Child support and alimony are completely separate and always were. I never asked for alimony, for instance. I just got child support for the kids.


This says that the both legitimate and illegitimate children are equal.