Minister of Justice Buschmann wants to reform the maintenance law – now he has presented key points: Mothers or fathers who are significantly involved in the care of their child should therefore have to pay less maintenance.
In the future, maintenance payments should be based more on how much the parent who is separated from the child is involved in looking after the child. This is what Justice Minister Marco Buschmann plans to do. Accordingly, the maintenance payments could fall by around 100 euros a month, as he said when presenting the key points. However, in the future too, it will largely depend on what the parents earn in terms of income.
The current plans involve mothers or fathers with a proportionate co-care of 30 to 49 percent of the time. The basis for the calculation should be the number of overnight stays. According to the ministry, these parents currently have to pay full maintenance with only very small deductions. The reform should therefore create incentives to get more involved.
The reform should have no effect on all other families. These are separated parents, who each have half of the children with them, or single-parent families in which the mothers or fathers look after the children alone or for the most part.
“Nothing is set in stone”
Buschmann stressed that the reform was overdue and that he was ready for dialogue. “Nothing is set in stone,” he said. That’s why he first had key points worked out.
However, the law must take into account the reality of life. Before and after a separation, many couples wanted to look after their children as equally as possible. A maintenance right, according to which one pays and one looks after, no longer does justice to this, according to the FDP politician.
The paper should provide a basis for discussion “in the federal government, with science and with legal practice – and of course also with the families affected by separation”. According to the minister, an open discussion is the best way to achieve this. “The reform should not be a law for fathers and no law for mothers – but a real family law – with the child’s welfare as the highest standard.”
Also plans for child support
Child support is also to be reformed. One parent pays this to the other if the children are still very young and one of the two has to limit his or her work to look after them. According to the key issues paper, the reform aims to eliminate “unjustified” differences between child support payments for divorced and non-marital couples.
Associations warn injustice
Social organizations expressed concerns. Above all, they fear imbalances for the parents who are mainly caring for them. “The fact is that children who receive maintenance from the separated parent under the old law will most likely have less money available each month after the reform than before,” explained Rainer Becker, Honorary Chairman of Children’s Aid. “How is this supposed to be dealt with – also unbureaucratically?”
The children’s aid emphasized that a care service should not only be offset against the time that the child is cared for by the other parent. After all, the more caring parent usually has higher financial expenses, for example for clothing and school supplies. “The deduction for children’s needs of 15 percent estimated in the key issues paper is far too low from the point of view of the German children’s aid,” it said.
The Social Association Germany (SoVD) was also critical. “Single mothers, who still bear the brunt of childcare and education today, must not be worse off as a result,” said SoVD CEO Michaela Engelmeier to the newspapers of the Funke media group. Disadvantages in the ability to work and the associated economic disadvantage, which arose from the distribution of care even before the separation, must also be taken into account.