Minors - עמיהוד בורוכוב, משרד עורכי דין

I have a judgment awarding my son, who is in my custody, maintenance. It says nothing about when his father will stop paying this maintenance. How long will my son be entitled to this support?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

The obligation to pay child maintenance stops automatically when the minor reaches 18, unless the court holds otherwise. The father does not have to apply to court to stop paying maintenance if nothing was said in the judgment about when his obligation ceases.

Can a high school student who has left home get maintenance paid directly from the non-custodial parent?

Guardianship and Adoption •Minors

Yes! Tel Aviv Family Court ordered a father to pay maintenance for his seventeen year old daughter directly to her and not to her mother,who had custody. The daughter child claimed her mother’s behaviour had driven her out of the house and she had rented an apartment out of town with her boyfriend, working in the evenings to support herself , and travelling from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to study every day. Her mother, she claimed, did not give her maintenance paid by the father. As well as ordering direct payment of maintenance to his daughter, the court ordered the father to pay part of her rent.

I am divorced. My wife has custody of our child. According to our divorce agreement which was authorized at the family court, and incorporated into a judgment, both my ex and I are equally liable for any exceptional medical expenses not covered by the ordinary health insurance. My wife Is very much into ‘alternative’ health and floods me with bills for homeopathic treatment and medicines . Do I have to pay half the cost of these?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

No – the divorce agreement obliges the father to contribute to exceptional medical expenses but as no mention is made about alternative medicine being included in this so one can assume that it is confined to conventional medicine. Accordingly, the father is not obliged to pay for half of the alternative treatment or medicines and to subsidize the mother’s preference for alternative medicine.

Note that if the wording of the agreement had been different , and alternative treatments had been specifically mentioned as binding, then the father would be obliged to contribute towards their cost.

is a handicapped child entitled to maintenance from a deceased’s estate ? If so, up to what age?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

The Inheritance Law says a child of the deceased who is handicapped is eligible for maintenance from his parent’s estate ‘ all the time he is handicapped..’ But the concept of a handicapped child does not appear in the above law so reference to other legislation must be made.

The rabbinical court granted me custody over my son and my ex-husband pays him maintenance. I was working but have been forced to change from a full-time to a part-time job because of my son’s learning difficulties. He has a severe concentration problem and attends a special school outside our district . There is no organized transport and I have to take him and bring him back every day. Can I get any money for this from my ex-husband?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

A Jewish divorcee is not entitled to maintenance after her divorce but where she is forced to stop work, or reduce her hours to devote herself to caring for a child with special needs, then she can file her ‘ex’ to recover expenses involved , such as travel expenses involved in taking the child to a special school. She should be entitled to some if not all of the expenses involved.

I am trying to negotiate a divorce agreement with my husband from whom I am separated. It is almost impossible trying to get him to agree to giving the children a decent sum of maintenance. He suggested putting a clause in our divorce agreement which fixes a sum for a limited period and then leaves the matter in the hands of an arbitrator. Is this possible ?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

No, the general rule developed in the courts is that children have a material right to maintenance and their parents cannot limit this or the way in which it is actualized by a divorce agreement signed by them. More specifically, the Tel Aviv Family Court has specifically stated that primary jurisdiction for child maintenance lies with the family court and cannot be handed over to an arbitrator.

In that case, the children had filed for maintenance from their father at the family court, despite an agreement signed by the parents whereby they undertook that future disputes on child maintenance would be dealt with by named arbitrators whose decision would be binding. The court proceeded to deal with the plea.

I got divorced a few years ago. I paid child maintenance according to our divorce agreement. We then lived together again for a few years and have recently split up. Do I still owe maintenance according to the agreement ?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

When a man and a woman live together again for a long period after divorcing one another there is an implied cancellation of the man’s maintenance obligation according to their divorce agreement. Thus if they split up once again, a new maintenance plea will have to be filed.

Is it possible for a father to make an agreement reducing child support with the mother after the family court has passed judgment about his maintenance obligation?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

Firstly, the concept of parents agreeing about child maintenance made after a court has passed judgment on how much the father should pay is problematic. Clearly, child maintenance is designed to cover the minor’s ongoing needs. Any agreement altering what the court decided should receive prior authorisation by the court. It needs authorisation according to the Legal Capacity & Guardianship Act of 1962 as in principle an agreement reducing child maintenance is contrary to the ‘child’s good’ – the latter being the guiding force of this legislation. It also needs authorisation according to the Family Law Amendment (Maintenance) Act of 1959.

My husband and I adopted a child. My husband and I have now split up. He left us and the child has remained with me. Can I file my husband for maintenance for our child, as well as for me?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

Yes. An adopted child has full rights to maintenance . An adoption order transfers all rights and obligations from the biological parents to the adoptive parents. Furthermore, under the Family Law Amendment (Maintenance) Act of 1959 the definition of a child given in the introduction includes an adopted child. Thus a plea for child maintenance can be made against an adoptive father.

My children live with their mother on kibbutz. I live in the city and am not a member of the kibbutz . Do I have to support my children or is this the responsibility of the kibbutz?

Maintenance / Child Support •Minors

A father bears the legal responsibility for supporting his children, even if someone else – here the kibbutz – does this in practice. So the Supreme Court held in the sixties in a case concerning a father and his maintenance obligation towards his children who were living with his ex-wife on kibbutz. The father was not a kibbutz member. He claimed that the kibbutz looked after the children’s every need and that, therefore, he was not legally bound to support them. His appeal was rejected.