Maintenance: what it covers, from whom, by which route

Article 1107 of the Civil Code lists it: housing, clothing, food, household furnishings and, generally, reasonable needs appropriate to the wife's circumstances. "Appropriate to circumstances" means maintenance has no fixed figure; an expert assessment sets it against the standard of living.

Child maintenance, by contrast, is owed by the father and measured by the child's needs, not the mother's standing. The two should not be run together in a single claim: their legal basis and their method of calculation are different.

Separating these two is the most practically important point in these cases. Past maintenance is a debt that has accrued and is recoverable like any other, with an expert fixing the amount for each period.

Future maintenance is an order to pay: the court sets a monthly sum payable from the judgment onwards. If you claim only one, the court will not award the other — the prayer for relief has to state both explicitly where both are wanted.

The claim is brought in the family court, which normally refers the question to an expert to fix a reasonable figure for the periods claimed, and then gives judgment.

Once final, the judgment is enforceable through the execution office: attachment of salary and benefits, of bank accounts and of assets. The advantage of this route is that it produces money; the drawback is that it applies pressure more slowly than the criminal one.

Refusing to pay a wife's maintenance, where she is fulfilling her marital obligations and the husband is able to pay, is an offence, and she may complain to the prosecutor's office. This route applies pressure faster and in many cases produces voluntary payment.

It has two limits. First, the criminal route does not itself recover the money — a civil claim is still needed for that. Second, the usual defences to it — disputing the wife's compliance, or pleading inability to pay — can turn the case into a longer fight. Many cases therefore run both routes at once.