How Dutch Child Maintenance Is Calculated

Search for a “child support calculator” for the Netherlands and you will find tools that produce a figure in thirty seconds. None mention that the figure has no direct statutory basis. Dutch law says only that parents must contribute to the cost of their children according to their means; the arithmetic comes from guidelines drawn up by the judiciary itself. This article explains how that calculation works and what changes when one parent lives outside the Netherlands.

There is no statutory formula: the Trema report

The Civil Code sets the principle, not the amount. Parents owe maintenance to their children (art. 1:392 BW); they must bear the costs of care and upbringing of their minor children in proportion to their means (art. 1:404 BW); and the amount is measured by the needs of the person entitled and the capacity of the person obliged to pay (art. 1:397 BW). That is all — no percentages, no tables, no brackets.

The gap is filled by the Rapport alimentatienormen, universally called the Trema report after the judges’ journal in which it first appeared. It is written by the Expertgroep Alimentatienormen, a working group of family judges from the district courts and courts of appeal, and published by the Dutch judiciary. A new version takes effect on 1 January each year, with the tables refreshed for that year’s tax rates, allowances and benefit levels; the current version dates from January 2026.

Two consequences matter. First, the report is not law: judges and parties may depart from it, and the report says so itself. It is a recommendation meant to make outcomes predictable and comparable nationally, not a binding tariff. Second, arguing about it is therefore persuasion rather than statutory interpretation. Where your circumstances do not fit the model the guidelines assume — irregular income, an employer allowance, income earned abroad — they can be argued around, but only with evidence.

The calculation runs in two steps: what the child costs, and what each parent can afford.

Step one: the child’s needs (behoefte)

The starting point is not what the child costs today, but the standard of living the child enjoyed while the parents were together. The guidelines take the parents’ combined net disposable income in the last period before separation and read the corresponding figure off a needs table (behoeftetabel), derived from national household budget research on what families at a given income level actually spend on their children. Some points catch people out:

• The table gives the total for all the children together. For a per-child figure you divide by the number of children. Because of economies of scale, two children do not cost twice one child: the amount per child falls as the number rises.
• Age does not change the table figure. The needs table works on averages across childhood and applies no age correction: a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old generate the same amount at the same income. Age can still matter in argument, for genuinely exceptional and demonstrable costs, but it does not shift the standard calculation.
• The kindgebonden budget is added to household income when the combined figure is established.
• Structural extra costs can be added on top: childcare, school fees, the cost of a disability or chronic condition. International school fees are a frequent battleground: the courts treat them as an exceptional cost on top of the table-based need only where the family’s expatriate situation, or agreement between the parents, justifies it.
• The table is capped. Above a certain combined income the table stops, and the need has to be substantiated with an actual expenditure schedule rather than read off a row.

One point of principle: the Hoge Raad held on 9 October 2015 (ECLI:NL:HR:2015:3011) that the kindgebonden budget and the single-parent supplement are not deducted from the child’s needs. They increase the capacity of the parent who receives them, and belong in step two.

Step two: capacity to pay (draagkracht)

Once the need is fixed, the guidelines calculate what each parent can contribute — both parents are assessed, not only the one who will pay. The calculation begins with each parent’s net disposable income (netto besteedbaar inkomen, NBI): gross income from all sources, adjusted for tax, credits and allowances. From that the guidelines subtract a notional housing budget set at a fixed percentage of the parent’s own income, plus a corrected subsistence norm for basic living costs. A fixed percentage of what remains — 70 per cent for child maintenance — is the parent’s capacity to pay.

The structure is deliberately crude, and that is the point: rather than examine each parent’s actual rent and grocery bills, the guidelines assume standard costs, so the outcome does not depend on how expensively a parent chooses to live. In 2026 that formula reads 0.70 x [NBI − (0.30 x NBI + EUR 1,175)] and applies from a net disposable income of roughly EUR 6,000. For lower incomes it is replaced by a table of fixed capacity amounts, with a minimum of EUR 50 a month where there is one child and EUR 100 where there are two or more, so a parent on a very low income still contributes something.

Some practical consequences:

• Actual housing costs are largely irrelevant. A high Amsterdam rent earns no automatic credit.
• Earning capacity, not just earnings. A parent who gives up work or takes a deliberate pay cut can be assessed on the income they could reasonably earn.
• Debts are usually ignored unless they are unavoidable and were not incurred by choice.
• Children come first. Where a parent cannot meet all their maintenance obligations, the claims of children and stepchildren take priority over other maintenance creditors, including a former spouse (art. 1:400 BW). Child maintenance is calculated first; spousal maintenance takes what is left, if anything.
• An acceptability test is the safety valve where the standard calculation would leave the paying parent below a bare minimum, but it requires full documented disclosure of income, assets and expenditure.

The care discount (zorgkorting)

A parent who has the child staying with them already spends money on the child directly — food, heating, a bedroom, activities. The guidelines recognise this with a care discount, expressed as a percentage of the child’s needs and deducted from what that parent would otherwise transfer.

The percentage is applied to the table need, not to the paying parent’s capacity, and holidays count towards the weekly average. A minimum of 5 per cent is normally applied even where contact is limited, on the footing that parent and child have both a right and a duty to have contact. In a genuine equal-shared-care arrangement the discount sits at the top of the scale, and parents often run a joint children’s account instead — a private arrangement rather than a guideline outcome.

What happens when there is a shortfall

If the parents’ combined capacity is less than the child’s needs — which is common — the shortfall is shared, each parent bearing half in principle. Where a care arrangement exists, half the shortfall is set off against the care discount: the paying parent loses part of the benefit of the discount and pays more than it alone would suggest. In severe cases the discount is absorbed entirely. Each parent still contributes up to the limit of their assessed capacity.

When does the obligation end?

Child maintenance does not stop at 18. Parents owe a contribution to the living and study costs of their children aged 18, 19 and 20 (art. 1:395a BW). This jongmeerderjarige duty differs from ordinary maintenance in one important way: the young adult need not show that they are in need. The Hoge Raad confirmed on 30 September 2016 (ECLI:NL:HR:2016:2234) that neediness is not a requirement, so a 19-year-old with a part-time job can still claim.

From 18 the claim belongs to the young adult personally, so payment is usually made directly to the child and any application is brought in the child’s own name. The care discount falls away, because it assumes care of a minor. At 21 the automatic duty ends; after that a claim between parent and adult child is possible only on the ordinary basis of genuine need.

Annual indexation

Every maintenance amount fixed by a Dutch court or agreed between parents is adjusted automatically on 1 January each year (art. 1:402a BW). The Minister sets the percentage from wage development and announces it in November for the following year. For 2026 it is 4.6 per cent; for 2025 it was 6.5 per cent.

Applying it is simple but frequently forgotten: take the amount payable in December and increase it by the percentage from 1 January. No court order is needed, and the paying parent is expected to transfer the new amount without being asked. Where indexation has been overlooked for years, the cumulative difference is recoverable as arrears. Indexation can be excluded, but only if the order or agreement says so expressly.

Changing an order: art. 1:401 BW

A maintenance order or agreement can be varied or withdrawn by a later court decision if, because of a change of circumstances, it no longer meets the statutory standard (art. 1:401 BW). Typical grounds: a change in either parent’s income, a change in the care arrangement, the birth of another child, a move abroad, job loss.

The same article gives two further routes. An order can be varied if it never met the statutory standard from the outset because it rested on incorrect or incomplete information — the route to take where a parent understated income. And an agreement can be set aside if it was concluded with gross disregard of the statutory standard.

Two warnings. The change must be more than trivial; a modest fluctuation in income will not do. And the courts are cautious about reducing maintenance retrospectively, because the money has usually already been spent on the child. Apply promptly rather than reducing your payments and arguing about it later: unilateral reduction creates arrears that remain enforceable.

Enforcement through the LBIO

If maintenance is not paid, the recipient does not have to instruct a bailiff straight away. The Landelijk Bureau Inning Onderhoudsbijdragen (LBIO) is a public body that collects maintenance on the basis of art. 1:408 BW, and its services are free to the person entitled to the money. The conditions are practical rather than technical:

• the maintenance must have been fixed by a court (a purely private agreement is not enough on its own);
• there must be arrears of at least €10;
• the non-payment must fall within the six months before the application, and in principle only arrears from that six-month period can be collected, unless the court has ordered otherwise;
• the paying parent must have been told where to pay.

Once the LBIO takes over, the paying parent bears the cost: 15 per cent of the arrears, minimum €19, plus 15 per cent of the ongoing monthly amount, again minimum €19. The LBIO can attach wages and benefits and escalate to formal enforcement, for which the sealed original of the court order is required. Paying in full and on time is by some margin the cheaper option.

The international dimension

For expat families the cross-border rules often matter more than the arithmetic.

Which court has jurisdiction?

Within the EU, jurisdiction over maintenance is governed by the Maintenance Regulation, Regulation (EC) No 4/2009. Under Article 3 the creditor may sue in the courts of the debtor’s habitual residence or of their own, and a maintenance claim may also be brought before the court already dealing with the divorce or with parental responsibility. That is a genuine choice, best considered before proceedings start. Article 4 allows the parties to agree on a court, but expressly not for maintenance owed to a child under 18: parents cannot contract out of the child’s forum.

Which law?

Jurisdiction and applicable law are separate questions: a Dutch court can and does apply foreign maintenance law. The applicable law follows the 2007 Hague Protocol, to which Article 15 of the Regulation refers. The general rule (Article 3 of the Protocol) is the law of the state where the creditor is habitually resident; if the child moves, the law of the new country applies from the moment of the move. Article 4 adds rules favouring the creditor in parent-to-child cases: if the law of the child’s residence gives no maintenance, the law of the forum applies; where the creditor sues in the debtor’s country, that country’s law applies first, with the child’s residence law as a fallback; common nationality is a last resort. A child who moves away from the Netherlands will usually have the claim assessed under the law of the new country, and the Trema guidelines will not apply at all.

Enforcement abroad

A Dutch maintenance decision circulates within the EU without an exequatur procedure where the Member State of origin is bound by the 2007 Hague Protocol (Article 17 of the Regulation), so enforcement can be pursued directly in the other Member State. Denmark’s position differs: it is bound by the Regulation under a separate agreement but not by the Protocol. Each Member State designates a central authority (Article 49); for the Netherlands that is the LBIO, acting as both transmitting and receiving body. Article 46 requires free legal aid for parent-child maintenance claims for a person under 21.

Outside the EU, the 2007 Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support provides a comparable framework of central authorities and simplified recognition among contracting states. Where the other country is party to neither instrument, recovery depends on that country’s own law and can be slow or, in practice, impossible. The list of contracting states changes, so check the status of the country concerned directly with the HCCH before relying on the Convention.

Income earned abroad and expat allowances

The net disposable income calculation assumes a Dutch payslip. Where a parent has income taxed abroad, an expatriate tax facility, an employer housing allowance or income in a foreign currency, the conversion into a Dutch net disposable income figure is contested more often than any other element of the calculation. The 30% facility counts as actual net income for as long as it runs; its loss is taken into account when it happens, not anticipated. Prepare the underlying tax documentation in advance.