alimony

Not a trace of legal certainty in the calculation of maintenance for children

Experts agree: The new maintenance law is anything but uniformly applied. Universal maintenance calculation methods and good tools for this are hardly used. This leaves the door open to arbitrariness.

Methods that are defined using examples are common, but cannot always be applied universally. This is to ensure individual justice. Those affected experience, however, that new rules are invented for each case. There are experts who find this unavoidable because of the alleged complexity. Every dish is free. In this fog, the lawyers rejoice. Uncertainty about child support is the order of the day for the parents concerned.

Why the mess?
The law offers no help for the maintenance calculation. It contains no rules and leaves everything open when it comes to child support. It also contains contradictions.

Examples from practice:
In the alimony calculator of the Higher Court of Zurich, the child support is an entry that serves as the basis for the calculation, not a result of the calculation. You also have to know who is liable to pay before you can start making entries.

• With the method of the Bern High Court, you have to distribute surpluses "intelligently".
• It happens that parents who go to court unanimously have to go a second time to revise the maintenance calculation.
• In Lucerne, a mother with a three-year-old child has to be in full-time employment if she has never lived with the father. In Zurich only when it is sixteen years old.
• In St. Gallen and other courts, flat rates are applied and it is not taken into account which costs are incurred by which parent.
• The exact division of care is usually not included in the calculation.
• The Zurich District Court awards the child allowance to the mother alone in the case of alternating custody.

Of course
, each case must be considered individually. But if two courts look at the same disputed case, the results should not be completely different. Of course, there is always discretion. With this law there is nothing but discretion! Of course, the revision of the law brings innovations that we welcome: the new law makes both parents equally responsible and alternating custody must be examined.

When calculating child support, we require

• Uniform rules instead of flat rates and arbitrariness
• consideration
  • Which share of the children is due to which parent (e.g. basic needs, housing, child allowance)
  • the division of care
  • to what extent care is a disabling factor
  • from half-siblings
• Individual justice through universal calculation method
• The right tool with a transparent result

We recommend
Our organizations use a method and tool that is well documented and available for anyone to test free of charge at www.kinderalimente.ch. It is currently the only one that meets our requirements.