Maintenance: Single mother should work full time

The current case

Do single parents have to work full-time? The new BGH judgment causes excitement.

The mother from Grevenbroich has two children, the youngest is in the third grade. For this daughter, the woman who works part-time, in addition to child support 440 euros care support from her ex-husband. But he did not want to pay that anymore and went to court. For since the maintenance reform of 2008, the child care must be paid only until the child is three years old. According to this, the caring parent is obliged to work again, even full-time. The prerequisite is that the child can be cared for accordingly.

In this case, the woman refused to work full time. Since the mother was ill for a long time, the daughter had to live for two years in a foster family. Now she should slowly get used to her mother again. The Higher Regional Court (OLG) Dusseldorf initially gave her right. A full-time job is not reasonable for the family, the maintenance must continue to be paid. But the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) contradicted this verdict now and has remanded the case to Dusseldorf. According to BGH, the daughter can be looked after in a full-time school. There are "no radical individual circumstances" that would stand in the way of a full-time job for the mother. The Higher Regional Court must now re-examine the case.



Is the judgment too hard?

Katharina Mosel, specialist lawyer for family law in Cologne

"At first the verdict sounds tough, of course," says family lawyer Katharina Mosel. But basically, there is only what has been in the law since the maintenance reform. "It is not enough to say today: My child is small, I need maintenance. As a caregiver, you have to provide reasons why the child needs care at home. " And in that case, the woman did not seem to have sufficiently substantiated her reasons. According to Mosel, many courts are still having a hard time judging by the new law. Especially with small children, the maintenance claim is waved through too quickly. "It is the job of the BGH to inform the courts to examine the cases more closely."



Single parents must argue well

But how can a single parent convince the court that a full-time job is unreasonable? According to Katharina Mosel, mothers and fathers have many options here, they just have to use them. If the mother thinks that the child is not well cared for in the all-day school, she can give reasons for this - that there are too few supervisors, that the child can not cope with the group or that it is not supported individually. This can be checked or confirmed by other parents. "Because often the existing facilities are not nearly as good as the legislature assumes in theory," says Mosel. If well justified, no judge would require to house the child there for eight to ten hours a day.

If the child is conspicuous and therefore needs more parent contact, the mother could explain these abnormalities and support this, for example, with a statement from the teacher. "It makes sense, too, that the mother presents her daily routine in court in detailFor example, a full-time job with shift work can hardly be reconciled with the days of a full-time school or a day-care center, which must be taken into account by a court to be introduced to a child psychologist. "But if all parties analyze and present their situation well, such reports are usually not necessary," according to the lawyer's experience. However, the courts ruled very differently. "This is an individual case law, each case is individually reviewed." In other words, the final decision is hard to predict and depends heavily on the people involved.



The responsibility is passed on to the women

It is also clear that the burden of proof lies solely with the caring parent. And that's just the women most of the time. "With the new maintenance law, the responsibility is fully shifted to single parents, leaving them pretty much alone," says Katharina Mosel. Since the care conditions in many places are still catastrophic, that was particularly unhappy. Nevertheless, the lawyer advises the lone parent to the confidence. In her experience, the difficult livelihoods of single parents and the age of children would be well taken into account in the judgments. So also the woman, whose case was treated by the BGH, still chances. "The case has now been remanded to the Higher Regional Court, and if the woman mentions plausible reasons, she may be able to continue providing childcare."

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Federal Court, maintenance, full time, Dusseldorf, Grevenbroich