Libro Primero · Título II Capítulo VIII. De los alimentos entre parientes

The term maintenance comprises everything that is indispensable for sustenance, housing, clothing, medical assistance and also the education and instruction of the maintenance recipient when the recipient is a minor.

Maintenance shall be proportionate to the personal and pecuniary circumstances of the person who owes it and of the person who receives it, and shall be fixed by the judge, in money.

The obligor may be permitted to provide maintenance in another manner when, in the judgment of the judge, there are reasons that justify it.

Maintenance shall be reduced or increased proportionally, according to the increase or decrease in the needs of the maintenance recipient, and the means of the person who must provide it.

Maintenance is owed only to the extent that the maintenance recipient's property and work are insufficient to satisfy his or her needs.

The right to maintenance is not waivable nor transferable to a third party, nor subject to attachment.

Nor may they be set off against what the maintenance obligee owes to the person who is to provide them.

Past-due maintenance installments may, however, be set off, made subject to attachment, waived and alienated.

Spouses, ascendants, descendants and siblings are reciprocally obligated to provide maintenance to one another. When the father, due to his personal and pecuniary circumstances, is not in a position to provide maintenance to his children, and the mother is also unable to do so, such obligation corresponds to the paternal grandparents of the maintenance recipients, for the entire time that the impossibility of the father of the latter lasts.

When the obligation to provide maintenance falls upon two or more persons, payment shall be apportioned among them in an amount proportionate to their respective means; in case of urgent need and due to special circumstances, the judge may decree that one or more of the obligors provide such maintenance provisionally, without prejudice to his being able to claim from the others the share corresponding to him.

When two or more maintenance claimants have the right to be maintained by the same person, and the latter does not have sufficient means to provide for all of them, he/she shall provide them in the following order:

1st. To his/her spouse;

2nd. To the descendants of the nearest degree;

3rd. To the ascendants, also of the nearest degree; and

4th. To siblings.

If the concurrent maintenance claimants are the spouse, or several children subject to parental authority, the judge, taking into account the needs of one and the others, shall determine the preference or the distribution.

For debts that the woman is compelled to incur for maintenance for herself and for the children, because the father fails to provide what is indispensable to cover such maintenance, he shall be liable for payment thereof in the amount necessary for that purpose.

The obligation to provide maintenance shall be enforceable from the time the person entitled to receive it needs it. Payment shall be made in advance monthly installments, and when the maintenance recipient dies, his heirs shall not be obligated to return what he had received in advance.

Whoever has supplied maintenance with protest of collecting payment therefor, has the right to be indemnified by the person who is obligated to satisfy the same.

The obligation to provide maintenance shall cease:

1.Upon the death of the maintenance recipient;

2.When the person providing it is unable to continue providing it, or when the need of the person receiving it ends;

3.In the case of insult, offense, or serious harm inflicted by the maintenance recipient against the person obliged to provide it;

4.When the need for maintenance depends on the dissolute conduct or failure to apply oneself to work of the maintenance recipient, while such causes persist; and

5.If minor children marry without the consent of the parents.

Descendants may not demand maintenance either:

1.When they have reached eighteen years of age, unless they are habitually ill, disabled or in a state of interdiction; and

2.When subsistence has been secured for them until the same age.

The provisions of this chapter are applicable to the other cases in which by law, by will or by contract, there is a right to maintenance, except as agreed or ordered by the testator or as provided by law, for the special case in question.

The right to maintenance arising from contract or testamentary disposition does not prejudice, in any case, the preference that the law establishes in favor of the relatives of the obligor.

The person obligated to provide maintenance against whom it has been necessary to bring a trial to obtain it shall sufficiently guarantee the due provision thereof with a mortgage, if such person has mortgageable property, or with a bond or other securities, in the discretion of the judge. In this case, the maintenance creditor shall have the right to have sufficient property of the person obligated to provide maintenance annotated, while such person has not guaranteed them.