Parental Maintenance Obligations Towards Children in Central Europe: The Highway to Hell or A Stairway to Heaven?

Abstract

One of the major challenges that contemporary family law faces is how to ascertain proper maintenance for the child in the case of his or her parents’ divorce or separation and how to ensure that this obligation will be carried out by the obliged parent. A variety of approaches to these problems are identifiable in Western countries. Although the shift towards maintenance based on obligatory or recommended mathematical formulas is discernible, there are still countries whose legislation contains only very vague rules in this field. This article focuses on these questions in the light of the relevant laws in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. All the above-mentioned countries have much in common as far as contemporary family law is concerned. This is primarily the effect of previously similar family law legislation adopted in 1949 and 1950 and, secondly, the effect of the long-lasting socialist era. Thus, the legal regulation of the maintenance obligation by parents towards their children has remained almost unchanged since those times in Poland and the Czech Republic. The determination of maintenance is still based on very simple rules and wide discretion by the courts is preferred. In Slovakia, on the other hand, new and progressive legislation was adopted in 2005. Nowadays, a minimum amount of maintenance is laid down and if the non-residential parent does not fulfil his/her obligation the state guarantees maintenance for the child to some extent. In this article, the development of legal regulation is explained and, furthermore, the practical impact of changes on the rights of parents and their children is explored. Such an exploration proves that contemporary vague and discretionary rules, which are effective in Poland and the Czech Republic, are problematical and are an inheritance from the socialist era.