Maintenance (alimony)

Maintenance is the right and duty of parents and children, marital and non-marital spouses, stepchildren, stepmothers and stepfathers, grandmothers and grandfathers

Maintenance is arranged by a court decision or court settlement on maintenance, as well as by a parenting plan.
 
Parents are obliged to support their underage children. If a parent is not supporting their child, the grandparents on their side are obliged to support the child if they are able to do so.
 
Parents are obliged to support their child who is over the age of majority while the child is in secondary school or until it finishes higher education and for one year after the child has finished its education, provided that the child regularly and duly performs its duties, but no longer than the age of 26. Parents are obliged to support their child who is over the age of majority and who is unable to work for as long as that incapacity is present. The duty of supporting a child who has reached the age of majority does not exclude the parents’ right to exercise various rights for that child in accordance with the established incapacity for work/disability.
 
A child who has reached the age of majority has to support a parent who is unable to work, does not have adequate resources to support oneself and cannot obtain them from their assets if this parent supported the child when they were obliged to.
 
Stepparents are obliged to support their underage stepchild if the child cannot be supported by the other parent and after the death of the child’s parents if they lived with their stepchild at the moment of the parent’s death.
 
A stepchild is obliged to support their stepparents and a grandchild is obliged to support its grandparents if the stepparents or grandparents are unable to work, do not have adequate resources to support themselves or cannot obtain them from their assets and if they supported the stepchild or grandchild for a longer period of time.
 
A marital/non-marital spouse who does not have adequate resources to support oneself and is unable to work or cannot find employment has the right to be supported by its marital/non-marital spouse.
 
The person receiving and the person seeking maintenance can ask the court to increase, decrease, terminate or change the form of maintenance determined in the previous enforcement document.

A child’s right to temporary maintenance

The right to temporary maintenance shall be vested in a minor child for whom the parent who does not live with the child does not pay maintenance in whole or in part and where it is established that the grandparent is unlikely to contribute to the maintenance of the grandchild by that parent.

The application for temporary maintenance shall be submitted by the parent with whom the child resides to the Croatian Social Work Institute, after three months from the commencement of enforcement proceedings. The Croatian Social Work Institute will of its own motion initiate proceedings to exercise the right to temporary maintenance when the parent with whom the child resides refuses to initiate proceedings to exercise the right to temporary maintenance or when the child is cared for by another person in accordance with the Regulation governing family relations. The procedure for exercising the right to temporary maintenance is carried out by the Croatian Social Work Institute competent for the child in accordance with the Regulation governing the activity of social welfare (Social Welfare Act).

Temporary maintenance shall be set at 50% of the statutory maintenance minimum.