Variation and enforcement

Circumstances change, and maintenance can change with them. It can also go unpaid. This page explains how maintenance can be varied, and how it is enforced. Article numbers refer to the Civil Code unless stated, and “regulations” refers to the Family Court Proceedings Regulations, 2026.

Changing maintenance

• If the payer can no longer pay. Where the person who supplies maintenance becomes unable to continue, in whole or in part, they can ask to be released from the obligation, or to have the amount reduced (article 21).
• If the need ends. The same applies where the need of the person receiving maintenance ends, wholly or in part (article 21).
• After separation. If there is a supervening change in the means of the spouse who pays or in the needs of the other spouse, the court can, on the request of either, vary or stop the maintenance (article 54). A lump sum or transfer of property that fully satisfied the obligation ends the liability.
• Remarriage or a new relationship of a former spouse who receives maintenance after divorce ends the maintenance, unless it was ordered as a lump sum (article 66M).

How to ask for a change

If you want to change maintenance, or other terms of a separation or divorce, you go through mediation first. Disputes about changing anything regulated by a separation judgment or contract, or by a divorce decree or judgment, are sent to mediation, and the court decides if you do not agree (regulation 39). If you and the other party both agree to change a deed or judgment, you file a joint application with the draft changes and do not need mediation. If a child is involved, the court may appoint a Children’s Advocate before it decides (regulation 44).

Enforcement

If maintenance is not paid, there are several ways to enforce it.

• Payment direct from a salary. In maintenance cases, the court can order a specified portion of a salary, allowance or other payment to be paid directly to the person owed maintenance, and the order has the same effect as a garnishee order (Code of Organization and Civil Procedure, article 381). Maintenance ordered by the court can also be deducted from the payer’s salary, or the court can order the payer to set up a standing order with a bank (regulation 30).
• During the case. If an interim order is breached, the other party can apply to the court. Where there are repeated breaches, the court can hold a hearing and make the orders needed, and can suspend the rights of the party in breach where there is no good reason for the breach (regulations 34 and 50).
• Criminal offences. A parent or spouse who leaves their children or spouse in want, through disorderly living or indolence, commits a contravention. So does a person ordered by a court, or bound by contract, who fails to pay the sum fixed within fifteen days of the day it was due (Criminal Code, articles 338(y) and 338(z)). See “Penalties for not paying” below.
• Security. In a divorce, the court can order a guarantee for up to five years of maintenance where maintenance is due and unpaid (article 66I).

Penalties for not paying

Both offences are contraventions, the least serious category of criminal offence. Neither has a penalty of its own, so the general scale for contraventions applies. The court can order detention (generally up to two months), a fine (generally between about €7 and €58) or a reprimand, and can combine them (Criminal Code, articles 7, 12, 13 and 341).

Three further points apply to failing to pay a sum fixed by a court or by contract:

• Repeat offenders can be punished with detention of up to three months, a fine of up to €200, or imprisonment of up to two months (article 338(z)).
• Repeated failures are treated together. Several failures to pay the same person at different times count as one continuous offence. If the payer has already been charged, later failures can be added to the same charges with the court’s permission (article 338A).
• There is a time limit. The criminal action for non-payment is barred after six months (article 338(z)), so a complaint should not be left.

The criminal route is separate from recovering the money. A civil claim for unpaid maintenance allowances is barred after five years (Civil Code, article 2156), so arrears should not be left to build up. The civil routes described above, such as payment direct from a salary, are the ways to recover what is owed.

If the paying parent lives abroad

Maintenance orders can often be enforced across borders. Which route applies depends on where the payer lives, and sometimes more than one is available. In short:

• In another EU country: the EU Maintenance Regulation. Council Regulation (EC) No 4/2009 covers maintenance between family members, including children and spouses. It decides which court can hear a claim and, through the 2007 Hague Protocol by which Malta is bound, which country’s law applies. A decision from another EU country bound by the Protocol is recognised and enforced in Malta without a separate declaration of enforceability (article 17 of the Regulation). Central authorities in each country help claimants, for example by locating the payer. In Malta this is the Social Care Standards Authority. For child maintenance, the central authority can start proceedings without charge.
• In a non-EU country that has joined the 2007 Hague Convention. The EU is a party to the Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, and Malta has been bound by it since 1 August 2014. It sets up the same kind of cooperation between central authorities, and the recognition and enforcement of maintenance decisions, with countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Norway, Ukraine and Türkiye. It is mainly about child maintenance, and also covers spousal maintenance in some cases.
• In a country designated under the Maintenance Orders (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act (Cap. 242). This is Malta’s older reciprocal system. It applies only to countries that the President of Malta has designated by Order as treating Maltese maintenance orders in the same way. It covers an order for periodical payments of maintenance, including a child’s education (article 2).

Cap. 242 in more detail

• A Maltese order to be enforced abroad. If the payer lives in a reciprocating country, the person owed maintenance applies to the court that made the order. If the court is satisfied, it sends a certified copy of the order, a certificate that it is enforceable, a certificate of arrears and information about where the payer is to the Minister responsible for justice, who passes them on to the responsible authority in the other country (article 4). Where there is no order yet, a Maltese court can make a provisional maintenance order against a payer living in a reciprocating country. It has no effect until a court there confirms it (article 5).
• A foreign order to be enforced in Malta. An order made in a reciprocating country, sent through the Minister once the payer is shown to live in Malta, is registered in the competent Maltese court. It can then be enforced in Malta as if that court had made it (articles 7 and 9). A provisional order from abroad is confirmed only after the payer has had the chance to raise any defence he could have raised where the order was made (article 8).
• Changing the order. The Maltese court can vary or revoke a registered order, but often only by a provisional order that must be confirmed in the country that made it (articles 6 and 10).
• If the payer moves. If the payer leaves Malta, the registration is cancelled and the papers go back to the Minister to send on (articles 11 and 12).

What this means in practice

Cross-border cases take longer than domestic ones, and the foreign country’s own rules decide how the order is enforced there. The documents usually need translating and certifying. Please tell us as early as you can where the payer lives, works and holds assets. We will tell you which route is open, and whether it is worth taking.

If you are not receiving maintenance, or cannot keep paying

Please talk to us sooner rather than later. We can look at your order, explain the options and, where appropriate, ask the court for a change or for enforcement.