With separation or divorce, the judge orders that the non-custodial parent pay the child’s custodial parent a maintenance allowance to support ordinary expenses.
Extraordinary expenses are excluded from the contribution. Extraordinary expenses are expenses for child support that are not of an ordinary nature. Extraordinary expenses are “those which, due to their importance, their unpredictability and their imponderability, go beyond the normal life regime of children”.
They cannot be calculated in the maintenance allowance since the inclusion of flat-rate extraordinary expenses in the maintenance allowance “may turn out to be in conflict with the principle of proportionality enshrined in article 155 of the civil code and with that of adequacy maintenance, as well as causing serious damage to the offspring, which could be deprived, not allowing the economic possibilities of the only beneficiary of the “cumulative” allowance, of necessary treatments or other indispensable contributions”.
Difference between extraordinary and ordinary expenses
On the difference with ordinary expenses, the Court of Rome affirmed that “expenses relating to substantially exceptional events in the life of the minor child must be classified as extraordinary expenses – as such excluded from the amount of the maintenance allowance – or expenses to satisfy sporadic, sporadic and unpredictable needs and those concerning ordinary events not included in maintenance”.
On the contrary “the ordinary expenses – and therefore the maintenance allowance – include all the expenses that frequently occur in everyday life, such as food, clothing, contributions for housing costs, school supplies, stationery, canteen , urban transport costs, field trips organized by the school within the school timetable, modest medical-pharmaceutical expenses incurred for the purchase of medicines for pathologies that frequently occur in daily life”.
Child support must be proportionate to each parent’s income. The distribution of extraordinary expenses is left to the judge in the separation, divorce or custody proceedings.
Memoranda of Understanding (Protocolli di intesa)
To facilitate the correct identification and distribution of extraordinary expenses during separation and divorce, the various memoranda of understanding stipulated between the judicial authorities and lawyers’ associations are of great use.
Memoranda of understanding and guidelines on extraordinary expenses during separation, divorce or amendments thereof have been drawn up to reduce the amount of litigation between spouses in determining and allocating extraordinary child support expenses.
The Cassation on the unrepeatability of extraordinary expenses
The Court of Cassation ruled that extraordinary expenses anticipated by one of the parents without prior consultation with the other, required by the binding judicial title between the parties, are unrepeatable.
In the specific case, the mother took legal action against the father in order to obtain the reimbursement of the amount advanced by way of extraordinary expenses in favor of the minor children. The man objected, complaining of the absence of a prior agreement regarding the disbursements, also in consideration of the considerable amount of the sum.
The Court, with the order n. 793/2023, rejected the appeal presented by the mother and confirmed the sentence on the merits. In fact, the presidential ordinance envisaged as a mandatory obligation, for reimbursement, the prior agreement between the parents of extraordinary expenses, and excluded from this obligation only some categories of expenses for which the presentation of the relative documentation is sufficient.
On the basis of the aforesaid measure, adopted at the time of separation, some expenses were found to be recoverable, while the other disbursements, since they were not agreed – and some were not even documented – are unrecoverable.