Alimentatie in the Netherlands: 2026 Indexation, LBIO and the Rules

Alimentatie is the Dutch word for maintenance, and it covers two obligations that share a name and very little else. Kinderalimentatie is money for a child and is owed by both parents; partneralimentatie is money for a former spouse and is awarded by a court.

They are calculated differently, they last for different periods, and they end for different reasons. What they do share is the machinery: the same annual indexation, the same priority rule, the same variation route, the same collection body and the same court.

This page covers that shared machinery and points to the two pages that answer the specific questions. It is written against the Burgerlijk Wetboek Boek 1 as consolidated on 5 July 2025.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Netherlands law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Which kind of alimentatie is your question about

The amounts, the tables and the worked calculation for children are on the kinderalimentatie page. The duration scheme, the exceptions and the hardship route for a former spouse are on the partneralimentatie page.

Who owes maintenance to whom

Both parents owe maintenance for their children under artikel 1:404 lid 1 BW, each according to their own draagkracht, and that duty continues until the child turns 21 under artikel 1:395a lid 1 BW. Artikel 1:392 BW sets out the wider circle of relatives who can owe maintenance, and from 21 onward a parent's duty exists only under that article. Its lid 2 adds a condition that does not apply below 21: the maintenance is owed only in geval van behoeftigheid, where the person is genuinely in need.

Artikel 1:406 lid 1 BW gives the enforcement route where a parent or stepparent does not meet the duty at all: the other parent or the guardian can ask the rechtbank to fix the amount payable for the child.

For a former spouse the source is different. Artikel 1:156 lid 1 BW lets the court award maintenance to a spouse who does not have sufficient income to live on and cannot reasonably acquire it, and artikel 1:157 BW then caps how long the award can run.

The two yardsticks, and where the numbers come from

The Burgerlijk Wetboek names the two yardsticks in artikel 1:397 lid 1 BW, behoefte and draagkracht, but sets no amounts: every figure comes from the Rapport alimentatienormen, guidance the Expertgroep Alimentatie of the Rechtspraak publishes each January, which is not law and which a court may depart from in an individual case.

In outline, behoefte is what the person entitled actually needs, and draagkracht is what the person liable can actually pay. Artikel 1:397 lid 2 BW adds that where several people owe maintenance to the same person, each pays a share, set by their own draagkracht and by their relationship to the person entitled.

The distinction that matters for reading anything about alimentatie is between those two kinds of authority. The statute is law; the Rapport alimentatienormen is guidance the judiciary publishes for consistency and can depart from where there are special circumstances. The indexation below is the opposite case, and it is worth seeing why.

Children come first

Where a payer cannot meet every obligation, artikel 1:400 lid 1 BW ranks children and stepchildren under 21 ahead of a former spouse, so kinderalimentatie is calculated first and partneralimentatie only out of what remains.

The practical consequence is an order of operations rather than a preference. Where money is short the child figure is worked out first and the former spouse is paid out of whatever draagkracht is left, which can be nothing at all.

The 2026 indexation is 4.6 per cent

Maintenance amounts fixed by a court or by agreement change automatically each 1 January under artikel 1:402a BW, and for 2026 the Ministry of Justice and Security set that increase at 4.6 per cent in a beschikking published in the Staatscourant.

Artikel 1:402a lid 1 BW is the source, and its wording answers the two questions people actually ask. It applies to bedragen voor levensonderhoud fixed by a rechterlijke uitspraak or bij overeenkomst, so both court-ordered and privately agreed amounts change, and it sits in the general maintenance title, so it covers child and spousal maintenance alike.

It also happens van rechtswege, by operation of law. Nobody applies for it and no fresh court order is required. The Landelijk Bureau Inning Onderhoudsbijdragen (LBIO), the public body that collects unpaid maintenance, puts the practical consequence plainly: a payer should make sure the new amount is being paid from 1 January.

Lid 2 fixes the timing and the publication. The change takes effect on the 1 January following the 30 September measuring date, and the beschikking setting the percentage is published in the Staatscourant.

How the percentage is arrived at

The index used is the CBS index of collectively agreed wages per month including special payments (indexcijfer der lonen), defined by an algemene maatregel van bestuur under lid 3. The comparison is between 30 September of one year and 30 September of the year before.

For 2026 the index stood at 120.3 at 30 September 2024 and at 125.9 at 30 September 2025. The difference is 4.65502 per cent.

Lid 4 then does the rounding, and it does not round in the payee's favour. The percentage may be rounded to tenths of a per cent, and where the second or a later decimal is a five, that rounding is downwards, which turns 4.65502 into the 4.6 per cent that took effect on 1 January 2026.

A worked example

Take maintenance of EUR 1,000 a month, fixed by a court order or by an echtscheidingsconvenant during 2025. From 1 January 2026 it becomes EUR 1,046.00 a month, and nothing has to be filed for that to happen.

The increase compounds, because each year's percentage is applied to the amount as already indexed. That is why an amount fixed several years ago is usually well above its original figure, and why arrears calculated on the original figure come out too low.

The percentage for the following year is announced in November, so the 2027 figure is due in November 2026. Any statement of a bare percentage without its year is out of date on 1 January.

When indexation does not apply

Artikel 1:402a lid 5 BW allows the automatic change to be excluded, wholly or for a fixed period, by court order or by agreement, and allows a different periodic adjustment mechanism to be substituted. Exclusion clauses of that kind are common in an echtscheidingsconvenant, so the first thing to check is the document itself.

Where a bespoke mechanism has been substituted, lid 6 lets the court order how and when the payer must supply the figures needed to work out the new amount. Under lid 7 an exclusion can later be withdrawn by court order.

Collection when it is not paid

A maintenance decision is an enforceable title, so a gerechtsdeurwaarder, the Dutch enforcement officer, can act on it directly. The statute also provides a public alternative that costs the person owed nothing.

Artikel 1:408 lid 2 BW allows the LBIO to take over collection on the request of the person entitled, the person liable, or both together. The enforceable title is handed to the Bureau, which is thereby authorised to collect, if necessary by enforcement.

Lid 4 sets the condition that decides most requests. The person owed has to make it plausible, at the time of the request, that within at most the six months before it the payer fell short on at least one periodic payment, and collection then runs on amounts due from at most six months before the request.

Lid 5 gives the payer notice: a letter with acknowledgement of receipt setting out the intention, the reason and the amount including collection costs, after which the Bureau may collect from the fourteenth day. Under lid 3 those collection costs are recovered from the payer, not from the person owed.

Two further leden are easy to miss. Under lid 6 collection at the request of the person owed ends only after at least six months of regular payment with nothing further outstanding, and that six month period doubles each time a previous collection was also started at their request. Under lid 7 a collection running when the child reaches majority continues for the now adult child unless that person asks for it to stop.

Changing an amount, and how far back a claim reaches

Artikel 1:401 lid 1 BW allows a court decision or an agreement on maintenance to be varied or withdrawn by a later decision where a change of circumstances means it no longer meets the statutory yardsticks. Lid 4 covers an amount that rested from the start on incorrect or incomplete information, and lid 5 covers an agreement made with a grove miskenning van de wettelijke maatstaven.

Terms are treated separately from amounts. A term fixed by the court under artikel 1:156 lid 3 BW or artikel 1:157 lid 7 BW, or contained in an artikel 1:158 BW agreement, is outside lid 1's first sentence and has its own narrower test in lid 2: a change of circumstances so drastic that leaving the term unchanged cannot be required of the applicant.

Two different limits are in play here and they answer different questions. Where no amount has ever been fixed, artikel 1:403 BW provides that no maintenance is owed for a period that had already run more than five years when the request was filed, so a court asked to fix maintenance now cannot award it for the years before that.

Where an amount has already been fixed by a court or agreed, the arrears are a debt under that title. The limit is then the five year prescription of the power to enforce periodic payments in artikel 3:324 lid 3 BW, which artikel 3:325 lid 2 BW interrupts on service of the decision, a written demand, an acknowledgement or any act of enforcement. A person who has kept demanding payment in writing has therefore not necessarily lost the older arrears.

Artikel 1:402a lid 8 BW closes the loop between arrears and indexation. Enforcement of a maintenance title takes account of the automatic changes that had taken effect by the time of enforcement, so arrears are computed on the indexed amounts.

What cannot be agreed away

Artikel 1:400 lid 2 BW is one sentence and it is absolute: agreements waiving maintenance owed under the law are void. It sits in the title on maintenance between relatives, and it bites hardest on child maintenance, because that duty is owed to the child rather than to the other parent.

Spouses have more freedom between themselves. Artikel 1:158 BW lets them agree, before or after the divorce order, whether and how much partneralimentatie is payable, and an agreement without a term picks up most of the artikel 1:157 BW duration scheme by analogy.

Where it is decided

Dutch family and maintenance cases are heard by the rechtbank, not by the kantonrechter, whatever the amount at stake, because artikel 93 Rv does not assign family or maintenance matters to the kantonrechter at any value. That is the district court, and these matters go to its familiekamer. Artikel 1:406 lid 1 BW names the rechtbank directly for fixing a child maintenance amount.

A divorce petition must be signed by an advocaat under artikel 278 lid 3 Rv, which exempts only cases filed with the kantonrechter or exempted by a special statute, and a divorce is neither. An advocaat is the Dutch lawyer with rights of audience before the courts, and no other legal profession can sign the petition. The procedure, the court fee and the subsidised legal aid scheme are set out on the divorce page.

A Dutch divorce takes effect only when the court order is entered in the registers van de burgerlijke stand under artikel 1:163 lid 1 BW, and under lid 3 the order loses its force if registration is not requested within six months of the day it became final. That registration date matters for maintenance too, because it is the date on which the partneralimentatie period starts running. The rest of the cluster is linked from the family law section.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does alimentatie go up in 2026?

The statutory indexation for 2026 is 4.6 per cent, fixed in a beschikking published in the Staatscourant (Stcrt. 2025, 39488). It applies from 1 January 2026 to amounts for both child and spousal maintenance, whether they were set by a court or agreed between the parties. A payment of EUR 1,000 a month set in 2025 becomes EUR 1,046.00 a month from 1 January 2026.

Do I have to apply for the yearly alimentatie increase?

No. Artikel 1:402a lid 1 BW changes the amounts van rechtswege, by operation of law, so no application and no new court order is involved and the payer is expected to pay the new figure from 1 January. The one exception is in lid 5: a court order or an agreement can exclude the automatic change, wholly or for a set period, and can put a different adjustment mechanism in its place.

How is the indexation percentage calculated?

Artikel 1:402a lid 1 BW ties it to the percentage difference between the wage index (indexcijfer der lonen) at 30 September of one year and the same index a year earlier, using the CBS index of collectively agreed wages per month including special payments. For 2026 the index moved from 120.3 to 125.9, a difference of 4.65502 per cent. Lid 4 allows rounding to tenths of a per cent and requires a five in the second or a later decimal to be rounded down, which produced 4.6 per cent.

What is the difference between kinderalimentatie and partneralimentatie?

Kinderalimentatie is maintenance for a child, owed by both parents under artikel 1:404 lid 1 BW until the child turns 21, and it cannot be waived. Partneralimentatie is maintenance for a former spouse, awarded by the court under artikel 1:156 BW where that spouse lacks sufficient income and cannot reasonably acquire it, and its duration is capped by artikel 1:157 BW. The calculation methods differ as well.

What can be done when alimentatie is not paid?

A maintenance decision or a notarial deed is an enforceable title, so a gerechtsdeurwaarder can enforce it. Alternatively artikel 1:408 lid 2 BW lets the LBIO take over collection on the request of either party. Lid 4 attaches a condition: the person owed has to show that within at most the six months before the request the payer fell short on at least one periodic payment, and collection then covers amounts due from at most six months before the request.

Can an alimentatie amount be changed if my income drops?

Artikel 1:401 lid 1 BW allows a court decision or an agreement on maintenance to be varied or withdrawn by a later decision where a change of circumstances means it no longer meets the statutory yardsticks. Lid 4 covers the case where the amount rested from the start on incorrect or incomplete information, and lid 5 covers an agreement entered into with a grove miskenning van de wettelijke maatstaven. Terms fixed under artikel 1:156 lid 3 or artikel 1:157 lid 7 BW have a narrower test of their own in lid 2.

Can parents agree to waive alimentatie altogether?

Artikel 1:400 lid 2 BW provides that agreements waiving legally owed maintenance are void. That bites hardest on child maintenance, where the duty is owed to the child rather than to the other parent. Spouses can agree the level of partneralimentatie under artikel 1:158 BW, and may even agree that none is payable, but the underlying statutory duty is not something the parties can simply cancel by contract.

How far back can unpaid alimentatie be claimed?

It depends on whether an amount has been fixed. If no maintenance has ever been set, artikel 1:403 BW stops a court awarding it for any period that had already run more than five years when the request was filed. If an amount is already fixed by a court or agreed, the arrears are a debt under that title, and the limit is the five year enforcement prescription in artikel 3:324 lid 3 BW, which artikel 3:325 lid 2 BW interrupts on service of the decision, a written demand, an acknowledgement or any act of enforcement, so continued written demands can keep older arrears alive. Under artikel 1:402a lid 8 BW enforcement takes account of the automatic indexations, so arrears are calculated on the indexed amounts.