How child support is decided on divorce
Article 1067 of the Civil Code gives "child support" a wide meaning: it covers the child's living costs, education and medical expenses. Where the parents cannot agree, a court decides, taking the child's best interests as its first consideration, so that the child's needs are met at the local standard of living and the burden is shared according to what each parent can afford. The interpretation sets the usual figure at 20 to 30 per cent of monthly income, payable until the child is 18, and allows the amount to be raised later.
01 What child support covers
The "child support" referred to in Article 1067 of the Civil Code includes the child's living costs, education expenses, medical expenses and the like.
Living costs are the money needed to provide a minor with the material conditions of life and to meet the child's daily needs; education expenses are generally those incurred in the basic education a child receives under the Compulsory Education Law of the People's Republic of China; and medical expenses are those incurred for ordinary, foreseeable illness.
02 How the burden is shared
After a divorce, where the child lives with one parent, the other shall bear part or all of the support. The amount and the period are settled by agreement between the two.
Where the parents cannot agree and apply to a court to fix the payments, the court will make the child's best interests its first consideration, and in principle will have regard to the following:
1) meeting the child's needs in living, education and medical care;
2) the actual standard of living in the place where the child lives;
3) a reasonable sharing between the parents according to what each can actually afford.
03 The amount and the period
The judicial interpretation on the Book on Marriage and Family sets the amount differently according to the type of income:
1) Where the parent has a fixed income, support is generally paid at 20 to 30 per cent of total monthly income. Where support is payable for two or more children the proportion may be raised, but should generally not exceed 50 per cent of total monthly income.
2) Where the income is not fixed, the amount may be fixed by reference to total income for the year or the average income in the same trade, applying the proportions above.
3) In special circumstances the proportion may be raised or lowered as appropriate.
Support is generally payable until the child reaches 18. Where a child over 16 but under 18 lives mainly on his own earnings and can maintain the ordinary standard of living of the place, the parents may stop paying.
Provision is also made for cases in which a child is already an adult but support is still necessary; support must still be paid where the adult child:
1) has lost the capacity to work or, though that capacity is not wholly lost, earns too little to live on;
2) is still in education;
3) genuinely has no ability or conditions to live independently, in which case the parents, if they can afford it, must still pay support.
04 Changing the amount
Where the parent with whom the child lives cannot meet the child's basic needs in living, education and medical care, the child may ask the other parent for more than the agreement or judgment provides.
A child is entitled to ask a parent who can afford it to increase support where:
1) the amount originally fixed is no longer enough to maintain the actual standard of living of the place;
2) the child's illness or schooling means the actual need exceeds the amount fixed;
3) there are other proper grounds for an increase.
The arrangement made on divorce rests on the social and economic conditions, the parents' means and the child's needs at the time. As the economy develops, prices change and the circumstances of the child and the income of the parents change, the amount, the manner of payment and the period may no longer suit the child's needs or the parents' means. The law therefore allows the child to ask for an increase.