Maintenance - Temporary Maintenance

Question:

I am unemployed and in a desperate financial situation and my marriage is in ruins. I have filed a maintenance plea against my husband but he has just ignored it, and has not filed any defence. What can I do to get financial support from him? 

Answer: 

Although a wife can only file for temporary maintenance after her husband has filed his defence pleadings, she does have another tactic available against his attempt to block her plea. She can apply for ‘pre’ temporary maintenance . Although this form of maintenance is not mentioned in any legislation or regulations, it is customary for courts to grant it in such situations.

Question:

If a family court increases the amount of child support a mother gets for her children until it decides on the final outcome of the case, from what time is she entitled to get the increase ?

Answer:

Where the family court makes a temporary decision to increase the sum of child maintenance the court sets it should give full explanation in the protocol. In principle, as well as stating the time from when the increase is to take effect, the decision could also provide for payment of this increase, backdated to the filing of the plea itself. This is what the Kfar Saba Family Court did in June 2004 when it gave a temporary decision to increase child maintenance a mother received for her minor children . It held that the increase was to take effect immediately, that month, and set out arrangements for the payment of the difference due each month from the time the plea was filed until then.

Question:

Can a Jewish woman whose Jewish husband has left her without virtually any income in their huge, luxury home get awarded temporary financial support to cover her living costs until her full maintenance plea is heard ?

Answer:

Yes! In July 2004 Kfar Saba Family Court awarded a housewife in her 60's, who only had a state pension, temporary maintenance of 16,000 N.I.S. Her husband, who was a public figure and a wealthy businessman with wide ranging interests in Israel and abroad, had left the family home, a luxury penthouse, following a breakdown in their relationship. In its decision, the court emphasized that the Plaintiff had been married to the defendant for over 40 years, and had a right under Jewish law to be kept at the standard of living to which she had become accustomed, prior to his departure. 

In addition, the court ordered the husband to pay 20,000 NIS to cover his wife's legal expenses in filing the plea, due to his negative behaviour during proceedings, especially his extreme viewpoints and "fabrications", which it was entitled to take into account. 

Question: 

How is temporary child maintenance calculated if the non-custodial parent lives abroad and is not Jewish? Does it matter if the Jewish parent having custody now – and claiming maintenance - actually abducted their child to Israel but the other parent dropped abduction charges ?

Answer:

Firstly, child maintenance must be filed where the child lives – that is at the family court serving his/her place of residence in Israel. The basis for the maintenance obligation is set down in the Family Law Amendment (Maintenance) Act of 1959. A parent must support his/her child according to the personal/religious law applying to him/her if relevant – and if not, according to civil law. A Jewish father is obliged to support his children according to Jewish law – that is he must shoulder the burden exclusively until the minor is 15, after which it is shared according to the parents’ relative incomes. If, however, the mother is not Jewish, then, unless they convert, the children are not Jewish either - in which case the father’s maintenance obligation under Jewish law will not apply and maintenance will be calculated according to civil law which divides the burden between the parents according to their relative incomes.

The situation becomes more complicated where the non-custodial parent lives abroad. Which law should be applied regarding his/her maintenance obligation ? A plea for temporary maintenance at the Tel Aviv family court filed by a Jewish father who had custody of two minors against their non-Jewish mother in France proves illustrative. The plea was made a few months after the mother had filed at the family court for visitation rights after dropping child abduction proceedings in Israel against her ex-husband upon the recommendations of a professional.

Rejecting the plea, the court held that the children converted to Judaism, and that according to Jewish law the father was solely liable for their basic maintenance. Where one a parent is a foreigner, the civil law of his/her country is applied by the Israeli court, it said. This must be proved by the submission of the legal opinion by a relevant expert. The mother claimed that under French law a parent who abducts a child loses the right to claim maintenance for them, but did not submit a legal opinion to support this.

Although the father was a surgeon abroad he was not working as he had not yet qualified to practise medicine in Israel. He lived off savings but still chose to continue a high standard of living. The children’s mother should not be punished further by having to pay temporary maintenance – after their father had abducted the minors from France and effectively imposed costly visitation rights on her, it held.The father had wrongly claimed that his Christian ex-wife, a multimillionaire with a high salary, should share the maintenance burden, according to Israeli civil law, it held, ordering both parents to submit affidavits and attend the next hearing on permanent maintenance.