A ground-breaking decision by Greece’s Supreme Court has ruled that if a divorced father does not pay court-mandated child support then this obligation is transferred to the paternal grandparents, assuming the latter are in a financially strong position.
The ruling emanates from a case where the grandparents of a minor appealed to the highest court a lower appellate court’s decision against them, which mandated that they pay a 280-euro monthly child support not covered by their son, the child’s father.
It was unclear whether the precedent only applies when dealing with a father, or if the circumstances were changed, could apply to a mother ordered to pay child support.
The specific case
According to reports, a couple married in 2005 and in 2011 had a daughter. A divorce was granted in 2015, with the mother given custody and the father obliged to pay 500 euros a month in child support over the 2015-2017 period. That sum was paid up until February 2016, with the latter unilaterally reducing the child support to 200 euros afterwards.
A court ruling subsequently ordered the man to pay back child support of 4,774 euros, a sum that was not collected, as the name showed little or no assets in the country.
The mother of the child declared and showed she lived with her parents (the maternal grandparents), had a monthly income of 630 euros over 14 months and paid everything involving her daughter’s upbringing, sans the 200 euros contributed by the father.
Conversely, the child’s father was shown as now being based in Bulgaria, where his family opened a manufacturing unit in his mother’s name, the child’s paternal grandmother.
The supreme court justices heard that the father lives an affluent life in the neighboring country and even races in car rallies.
Meanwhile, the paternal grandparents were shown, by the mother’s attorneys, possessing more than 10 properties, with the paternal grandfather receiving more than 1,800 euros in monthly income and the maternal grandmother showing gross income exceeding 206,000 euros in her 2015 tax return.
In their appeal, the paternal grandparents countered that the maternal grandfather receives a monthly pension of 500 euros, while the maternal grandmother earns roughly 1,000 euros a month from cleaning houses, and therefore, they can also contribute to the child’s financial support.
The supreme court ruling, which more-or-less confirmed the lower courts’ decisions, held that of the 560 euros designated as required for the child’s financial needs on a monthly basis, the 200 euros contributed by the father were deducted, 80 euros should be contributed by the maternal grandparents, and the rest, 280 euros, by the paternal grandparents.
A portion of the decision reads: “…the parents of the ex-husband (the child’s father) are financially well off, owning particularly significant real estate holdings and earning a total income exceeding 2,000 euros per month, while the other grandparents, on the maternal side, are unable to contribute to the maintenance of their granddaughter with their actual income.”
