Maintenance

As long as a young person is in education (school, apprenticeship, university study) and does not have a sufficient income to support themselves, their parents must pay maintenance. The parents' circumstances and the facilities, abilities and development potential of the juvenile/young person will be taken into account when determining how much maintenance should be paid.

As long as the juvenile/adolescent lives in the same household as their parents and they continue to provide for him/her (food, housing, clothing, materials for school or vocational training, leisure time, etc.), the parents do not have to make any additional financial maintenance payments. If the parents are separated, the parent the young person is not living with must pay maintenance. In principle, maintenance funds are paid to the parent who runs the household in which the juvenile is living.

The following method is usually used to calculate the entitlement to maintenance:

Deductions are made for siblings or other dependants (e.g. wife). More detailed information on maintenance claims when the child has their own income is available in the section on "Child Maintenance".

An approximate and non-binding estimate of the expected amount of maintenance payments due in respect of children and adolescents can be obtained using the maintenance calculator provided by the Austrian Working Group for Youth Welfare.

Further links

Maintenance calculator (→ Austrian Working Group for Youth Welfare)^{German text}