With the arrival of the vacations, especially the summer vacation, I am asked several times about the duty to pay full child support, since the child spends half the time with one parent and half the time with the other. This is a recurring question that needs to be answered, since it is all too often a source of conflict between the parents. To answer this question it is necessary to understand what alimony is and what its function and usefulness are.
What is alimony?
Alimony is essentially a monthly cash benefit paid to children and young people up to the age of 25, provided they are still in education or vocational training, which is intended to ensure their subsistence.
When the child has living parents and the parents, having been married, separate, divorce or legally separate from other people and property, or when the parents are not married and are not living together, it is mandatory to define the parental responsibilities of the parents.
Parental responsibilities are then a set of rules that contribute to and regulate the exercise of the rights and duties granted and imposed by law to parents to take good care of their children and look after their interests.
In the absence of an ideal parental agreement, or if this agreement is not, in the opinion of the court, the best for the child, it is up to the court to regulate this exercise, determining, namely, who will be entrusted with the custody of the child, the visitation regime of the parent who is not habitually residing with the child, the establishment of maintenance and the manner of providing it.
With regard to the obligation of maintenance, it is important to mention that article 36, no. 3 of our Constitution establishes the principle of equal duties of both parents in the maintenance of their children. Contrary to what is taken for granted by most parents, the law does not intend, with this principle, that each parent contribute mathematically half of what is necessary for the maintenance of the children.
What the law aims at is that each of them is responsible for ensuring, to the best of their abilities, whatever is necessary for the minor’s sustenance, housing and clothing, instruction and education.
Contrary to what is already happening in some countries, in Portugal there is no mathematical criterion in the law to determine the amount of alimony, nor any kind of table that allows this calculation. When there is no agreement between the parents, the courts rely on criteria of equity, evaluating, case by case, the contribution owed by each parent, that is, the economic effort of both parents for the upbringing of the children must be proportionally identical.
The concept of child support clearly goes beyond the simple need for food and extends to expenses related to the child’s health, safety, welfare, transportation, education, and instruction. This is where conflicts often arise as the parent who doesn’t live with the child doesn’t understand why he or she should pay full monthly child support when he or she has been with his or her child for half a month.
Alimony is intended to ensure the child’s yearly support, not just the payment of education and food that particular month.
It aims to ensure that the child lives well all year round. It aims to ensure that the child has available the means to live peacefully and happily. When the parent is on vacation with the child they still have to pay all the monthly expenses for the house where they live for example. On the other hand, if the parent who is obligated to pay child support receives a vacation or Christmas bonus you don’t have to pay any more child support that month.
It follows from our jurisprudence and from the law that alimony should be set at 12 annual installments and that the child’s stays at the non-custodial parent’s residence should not be considered as a cause for reducing the alimony obligation.
With this in mind, and really understanding the concept of what alimony is, it makes no sense to reduce it in periods when the parent who does not habitually reside with the child is with the child. Nor does it make any sense to create disagreements and disputes about this issue that will only contribute to the child’s and parent’s discomfort at a time when everyone is looking forward to the vacations.