The questions people actually ask.

There is no table and no percentage formula. The court weighs the justified needs of the child against the earning and financial capacity of both parents (art. 135 § 1 k.r.o.), and counts personal care as a real form of contribution (art. 135 § 2 k.r.o.). Two children with identical costs can produce different awards if the parents' capacities and involvement differ.

Yes. "Earning capacity" means your realistic potential, not your declared income. A non-working parent was assessed as capable of remote or part-time work; a soldier's allowances, bonuses and holiday gratuity all counted, not just base pay; even a foreign social benefit paid directly to a landlord was counted as capacity. Shrinking your payslip does not shrink your obligation.

No. Debts you took on voluntarily, knowing you had a child to support, do not reduce the child's maintenance. Courts state this as a hard rule: the child's needs come before consumer and housing credit.

As a rule, from the day the claim is filed, not from the judgment. Support judgments are immediately enforceable by operation of law (art. 333 § 1 pt 1 k.p.c.), even if an appeal is pending, and courts can order interim support for the duration of the case. Practical effect: waiting to file costs real money.

Only exceptionally. Arrears for the period before filing require proof of specific needs that genuinely went unmet (art. 137 § 2 k.r.o.). If the child's needs were in fact covered, by the other parent, family, or anyone else, there is nothing to compensate.

No. There is no age limit in Polish law, the test is whether the child can support itself (art. 133 k.r.o.). An adult child who genuinely continues education keeps the right to support; courts accept even non-standard study tracks where documented health reasons explain them, and it is the parent who bears the burden of disproving them. Courts do expect an adult student to contribute at least minimally from own work.

Yes, and courts do the arithmetic. One court took the official cumulative inflation figure (25.39%) and treated it as a standalone basis to raise support fixed years earlier. But the same logic disciplines the other direction: a demand to raise support by 240% when inflation ran ~4% was dismissed on appeal. Realistic, evidenced numbers win; wishful ones are cut down.

No, support is a money obligation, and gifts do not replace it. Worse: in a criminal non-payment case, the father's spending on presents proved he had funds he chose not to pay. (His genuine bond with the child did help him avoid a conviction, see B.3.)

Strongly, in both directions. A father with no contact for 2+ years had his payments raised, since he provided no personal care, his share shifted to money. A father who paid half of all extras, took the child two weekends a month and did the driving had the award set lower. A parent abroad with no regular contact was assigned 64% of the child's costs. Presence is priced in; absence is surcharged.

Only with proof of real money flows. A wealthy new partner of the receiving parent changes nothing unless it is shown the parent actually lives off those means. On the paying side, obligations toward an ex-spouse take priority over voluntary financial commitments made with a new partner, and joint investments with the new partner can be read as proof of capacity to pay.

Neither. By statute (art. 135 § 3 k.r.o.), core child benefits do not affect the scope of the support obligation. What does matter is the real cost of a need after subsidies, a nursery with a state subsidy counts at the parent's actual outlay, not the sticker price.

Yes. Persistent evasion of court-ordered support is a crime (art. 209 k.k.) once arrears reach the equivalent of three periodic payments. The aggravated form, exposing the child to the inability to meet basic needs, carries up to two years' imprisonment. Sentences in published 2026 cases range from fines and community-type sentences to unconditional prison for repeat offenders.

Everything. The offence requires evasion, having the ability to pay and choosing not to. An acquittal was upheld where illness made payment objectively impossible; another conviction was overturned because it was based on an outdated support judgment. If you genuinely cannot pay, document it and seek a court reduction, do not simply stop paying.

Courts choose sanctions that make future payment possible, not ones that destroy it. A first-time offender who kept a genuine relationship with his daughter had proceedings conditionally discontinued on 3 years' probation with an obligation to pay currently; another court chose a community-type sentence expressly because prison would hurt the children it was meant to protect.

Decisively. A spouse found solely at fault can be ordered to pay the innocent spouse maintenance on a milder test: not destitution, but a "significant deterioration" of the innocent spouse's position, measured against the standard of living the marriage would have provided had it continued. A pay gap alone can satisfy it.

No. It ends by law when the receiving spouse remarries (art. 60 § 3 k.r.o.); where the payer was not found at fault, the duty is generally capped at five years. And note: a stable cohabitation with a new partner, especially with a child born of the new relationship, can end it too, even without a wedding.

No. If no maintenance was awarded in the divorce judgment, the claim is not lost: a significant later deterioration (illness, job loss) opens the door, as long as you have not remarried. Courts judge the situation as it stands at the close of the hearing.

Yes, art. 27 k.r.o. obliges both spouses to contribute to the family's needs. But the claim protects the family unit: where the spouses have genuinely separated with no intent to reunite, one 2026 court dismissed the claim, holding the provision's purpose had lapsed and that it requires fair burden-sharing, not mechanical income equalisation.

As a rule, no, following Supreme Court resolutions III CZP 21/18 and III CZP 14/19, courts value the property without deducting the mortgage, and the spouse keeping the house pays the other half of that full value. Being "bought out" also does not remove your name from the loan, the bank is not bound by the divorce court's division.

Often, yes. The actio pauliana (art. 527–530 k.c.) lets a creditor claw back transfers made to defeat claims. Where the transfer was gratuitous (a gift, a free life-estate), the recipient's knowledge is irrelevant (art. 528 k.c.), and even future creditors are protected (art. 530 k.c.). In 2026 a court set aside a property division coupled with a free lifetime servitude on exactly this basis.

No. An eviction claim (art. 222 k.c.) does not work against a co-owner, each co-owner has a right to possess the whole property. The route is a court-regulated division of use (or division of the property), not changing the locks.

No. Polish courts can join the division of marital property, estate division(s) and dissolution of co-ownership in one proceeding, in one published case, four matters were resolved in a single decision. For international families with layered assets this saves years.

Yes, persistent lack of interest in the child plus non-payment of support qualifies as "gross neglect" (art. 111 § 1 k.r.o.), even without violence, and the court need not try milder measures first. Two facts every foreign parent should know: deprivation of authority is not a ban on seeing the child, and it is reversible on durable improvement (regular contact, payment, stability).

Distance alone is not neglect, what courts sanction is indifference. Organised, real, documented contact (visits, calls, school involvement) protects both your authority and your position on support. What is expensive is distance plus silence (see A.9: 64% cost share for an uninvolved parent abroad).

Parents manage the child's ordinary property as part of parental authority (art. 101 § 1 k.r.o.), but cannot consume the principal of major assets without guardianship-court approval (art. 101 § 3 k.r.o.). An appellate court also refused to let judges impose blanket account freezes absent a shown risk to the child's welfare.

The duty runs both ways in Poland (art. 128 k.r.o.), so yes, a parent in genuine need may claim from adult children. But the shield is strong: a claim contrary to principles of social conduct fails (art. 144¹ k.r.o.), a father who abandoned his son and never supported him lost exactly such a claim, brought from a care home. Your obligations to your own family also come first.

No. The maintenance obligation is strictly personal and expires at death; pending proceedings are discontinued, not inherited. (Arrears already due are a separate, estate-level question.)

On real, receipted needs, courts trim inflated lists, treat breastfeeding as lowering food costs, ignore benefits by statute, and count the caring parent's day-and-night care as their contribution (art. 135 § 2 k.r.o.). An award of 850 zł/month from the filing date, immediately enforceable, is a representative 2026 outcome.

Fatal. An appeal in a divorce case was rejected without any review of its merits because counsel failed to state the value of the claim under appeal and cured the defect after the one-week deadline (running from delivery of the court's request, art. 373 § 1 k.p.c.). Professional lawyers get no leniency. When choosing your advocate, ask how deadlines and formal requirements are managed, it is not a trivial question.

The claimant in a child-support case is exempt from court fees by statute (art. 96(1)(2) of the Court Costs Act). Courts are also visibly gentler on defendants with a clean payment record: a father who had always paid on time was spared the costs of the proceedings even though he substantially lost.

SAOS (saos.org.pl) is Poland's public repository of anonymised court judgments, every source above links to the official text. Rulings are in Polish; machine translation gives a workable first pass, but the reasoning sections are technical. Bring the link to your consultation and we will read the parts that matter to your case together.