With a reform of the maintenance law, the Federal Minister of Justice wants to distribute maintenance payments more fairly. Buschmann wants to present key points in the next few days.
Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann wants to relieve the burden on parents who look after the child with a reform of the maintenance law. “We will distribute the maintenance burden more fairly,” said the FDP politician to the newspapers of the Funke media group. Buschmann wants to present key points in the next few days, and a draft law should “follow as quickly as possible”.
The reform will particularly affect separated families, in which one parent does the main care, but the other parent also contributes 30 or 40 percent. “We want to create clear and fair rules for how this performance of the co-supervising parent is to be taken into account in child maintenance,” said Buschmann.
The minister gave an example calculation in which the father who takes care of the child earns 4,000 euros a month, the mother who looks after the child earns 2,000 euros and the father takes on 40 percent of the child-rearing duties. In this case, the co-supervising father has most likely paid more than 500 euros in maintenance. “If our plans are implemented, the father will pay a little more than 400 euros.”
Reform should not disadvantage primary supervisors
The minister denied that the reform was to the detriment of key carers. “If we motivate fathers to get more involved in looking after the children, that also helps the mothers. They can then work more, for example,” said Buschmann. At the same time, he assured: “We will make sure that the main caring parent does not have a situation that endangers the child’s well-being.” Also, no parent should be financially overwhelmed.
The German maintenance law is getting old and ignores the fact that many parents raise and look after their children together even after a separation, Buschmann justified his initiative. “In many cases, whether a father takes care of the child one or three days a week has little effect on the maintenance he pays detrimental.”
The SPD, Greens and FDP had also agreed on changes in maintenance law in their coalition agreement. “In maintenance law, we want to take better account of the proportion of caregivers before and after the divorce, without jeopardizing the child’s subsistence level,” says the section on family law.
Source: Stern
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