In a separation process, divorce or domestic partnership breakdown, it is usual to establish an alimony in favour of the children, as well as the contribution of both parents to the so
called “extraordinary expenses”, but what are the so called extraordinary expenses? We must start from the basis of the alimony, which is set to meet all those primary needs of the children such as clothing, medical care, education, food, housing and last but not least, education while children are minor, and even in the case of them being of legal age when they have not completed their official education because of reasons not attributable to them. In such a case both parents are obliged to face those expenses.

Extraordinary expenses are a series of expenses that were not initially foreseeen and which are characterized because they are unpredictable and necessary, therefore, they are recurrent, and must have express or tacit consent of both parents or judicial authorization, since otherwise it will not be possible to claim to the other parent the amount by way of an executive demand.

Costs of entertainment, birthdays, pocket money , etc, of the minor children, are expenses that must be included in the alimony, however when we refer to maintenance of adult children, we only mean the expenses covering basic sustenance such as clothing /footwear housing and education.

Lately the firm raises a series of questions concerning some children expenses. Are these expenses are ordinary – and therefore included in the alimony – expenses? or extraordinary expenses?. in order to clarify these concepts I will mention the more regular doubts which we face in Benjelali lawyers & mediators:

(a) Reinforcement of the children classes: In Sentences it’s usually set as ” extraordinary “expenses, those medical expenses not covered by National Health Service and other unexpected expenses which are necessary to the development, care and education of the children. This way of fixing the extraordinary expenses is “generic” and may not actually specify which expenses are extraordinary, given this situation we must refer to the Code of Civil Procedure regulations so that the judge determines if such expense is to be considered extraordinary and how should every parent contribute to this cost, being in such a case a writ of execution. If on the contrary such expense is expressly considered as a extraordinary one, then the own judgment will be executive

(b) School fees: In this section we include books, school monthly fees , school supplies, uniforms, and so on and so forth. We said at the beginning that extraordinary expenses are characterized by being necessary, and unpredictable. School fees are actually predictable and regular, so in principle should be included in alimony, unless expressly in the sentence or in the court approved settlement agreement proposal they have been considered as extraordinary expenses.

(c) Vaccines: childhood immunizations have set a timetable, so they cannot be considered extraordinary expenses and most of these are actually covered by the National Health Service .In case of an If exceptional shot, not fixed in the immunization schedule and not covered by the National Health Service or private insurance, if necessary, it might be considered as an extraordinary expense

(d) Morning classroom and voluntary donations in the religious charter schools: should not be considered extraordinary expenses since they are not unpredictable and follows a monthly periodicity, so they should be included in the alimony

In next articles I will try to make an analysis of the different assumptions and criteria held by the courts in relation to the concepts of alimony, extraordinary expenses and other pensions.

Sara Benjelali González

Lawyer