ATTENTION! Text translated automatically from the Polish version.
Most often we encounter alimony paid by one of the parents to maintain their children. However, it is worth remembering that alimony can also occur between persons belonging to the extended family. This is of practical importance especially when parents cannot afford to support a child.
The maintenance obligation concerns relatives in the direct line (grandparents, parents, and grandchildren, etc.) and siblings (brother and sister), but also spouses (including former ones), adopting and adopted persons, stepmother and stepchild.
An important rule regarding alimony is the order in which maintenance can be demanded from individual relatives. The maintenance obligation burdens descendants before ancestors, and ancestors before siblings; if there are several descendants or ancestors – it burdens closer relatives before more distant ones. Relatives of the same degree are burdened with the maintenance obligation in proportions corresponding to their earning and property possibilities.
Importantly, the maintenance obligation works in both directions. It is not so that only a younger person can claim maintenance from an older one – if someone needs maintenance, they can also claim it from younger family members (e.g. grandparents from grandchildren).
Alimony can also be paid between former spouses. A divorced spouse who has not been found to be solely guilty of the breakdown of the marriage and who is in poverty may demand from the other divorced spouse means of subsistence to the extent corresponding to the justified needs of the entitled person and the earning and property possibilities of the obliged person.
The obligation to provide means of subsistence to a divorced spouse expires when that spouse enters into a new marriage. When the obligated party is a divorced spouse not found guilty of the breakdown of the marriage, this obligation also expires after five years from the divorce ruling, unless due to exceptional circumstances the court extends this five-year period at the request of the entitled party.