Child maintenance in Portugal: what the State pays when the other parent does not

How much does the maintenance guarantee fund pay?

The amount is the lower of two limits, and you need both to arrive at the right figure.

The first is the statutory ceiling. Article 2(1) of Law 75/98 provides that the payments awarded are fixed by the court and cannot exceed, monthly, per debtor, the amount of one IAS, regardless of the number of minor children¹. In 2026 the Portuguese social support index (IAS) is 537.13 €, so that is the monthly maximum.

The second is the maintenance itself. Article 4-A(1), added by Law 71/2018, provides that the amount borne by the Fund cannot exceed the maintenance established in the agreement or in the judicial decision regulating parental responsibilities or fixing maintenance¹. If the court set 150 €, the Fund pays 150 €.

There is a third condition, which is not a limit but a margin of appreciation: article 2(2) requires the court to have regard to the household's economic capacity, the amount of maintenance set and the child's specific needs¹. So the figure you calculate is the maximum the Fund can pay, not a promise of what it will pay.

Is the ceiling per child or per debtor?

Per debtor, and this is the part most published texts invert.

Read the two phrases in article 2(1) again: "per debtor" and "regardless of the number of minor children". Article 3(5) of Decree-Law 164/99 repeats them word for word, which is unusual and signals that the legislator meant to close the door².

The arithmetic consequence is large. Take a father with three children and maintenance set at 300 € for each, that is 900 € a month. The intuitive reading would be that the Fund can pay up to three ceilings, 1611.39 €, and therefore covers the 900 € in full. The law says the opposite: there is a single ceiling of 537.13 €, shared between the three children, giving 179.04 € each. The remaining 362.87 € a month stays the father's debt.

Who qualifies, and is there an income limit?

Article 1(1) of Law 75/98 puts the conditions in a single sentence: the person judicially ordered to pay must have failed to satisfy the amounts owed through the ordinary enforcement route, and the child must have no gross income above the social support index (IAS) and must not benefit to that extent from the income of the person in whose care they are¹.

The second half of that sentence is vague, and the implementing decree resolves it. Article 3(2) of Decree-Law 164/99 provides that the child is taken not to benefit from another person's income above the IAS where the per-capita income of the household is not above that value².

Two notes on that wording. The first is "not above": a per-capita figure of exactly 537.13 € still meets the condition. The second is what per-capita means here, and it is not a division by the number of people. Paragraph 3 refers to Decree-Law 70/2010, whose article 5 sets an equivalence scale in which the applicant weighs 1, each adult weighs 0.7 and each minor weighs 0.5. Paragraph 4 of the same article 3 identifies the applicant for this purpose as the child's legal representative or the person in whose care the child is².

In a home with a mother and two minor children, the weighting is 1 plus 0.5 plus 0.5, that is 2. An income of 900 € a month gives a per-capita figure of 450 €, not the 300 € that dividing by three people would suggest. The difference matters: at 900 € the family qualifies comfortably, and there are income levels where dividing by heads would say it qualifies and the statutory scale says it does not.

Does the Fund pay maintenance already in arrears?

No, and this is the second expectation the scheme overturns.

Article 4(4) of Decree-Law 164/99 provides that the Social Security Financial Management Institute starts paying, on the Fund's account, in the month following notification of the court decision, with no payment of instalments already due, and paragraph 5 adds that the payment is owed from the first day of the month following the court decision².

Anyone expecting the State to cover the missing months will not find that in the law. Instalments already due remain the parent's debt and must be recovered from them, which normally means enforcement and wage garnishment, where a maintenance debt has its own and considerably harsher regime compared with ordinary debts.

The practical conclusion is direct: every month that passes between the non-payment and the application is a month nobody will pay the child.

How do you apply, and how long is it paid?

The application runs inside the proceedings, not over a counter. Article 3(1) of Law 75/98 provides that it falls to the public prosecutor, or to those to whom the maintenance should be paid, to apply within the relevant non-compliance proceedings for the court to fix the amount the State must pay in the debtor's place¹. If the claim is considered justified and urgent, paragraph 2 allows the judge to issue a provisional decision after taking evidence.

The payer is the Fund, established within the social security ministry and managed in a special account by the Social Security Financial Management Institute, and payment is made on the order of the competent court².

As to duration, article 1(2) provides that payment ceases on the day the minor turns 18, except in the cases and circumstances in article 1905(2) of the Civil Code¹, which maintains maintenance while the child continues in education. Article 3(6) requires the recipient to renew annually the proof that the conditions still hold, failing which the payment ceases¹.

Does the debtor stop owing the money?

No, and applicants should know this, because it makes the application less adversarial than it looks: the State is not writing off the debt, it is advancing the money to the child.

Article 6(3) of Law 75/98 provides that the Fund is subrogated to all the rights of the minors to whom payments are awarded, in order to secure reimbursement¹. Article 5 of Decree-Law 164/99 sets out the mechanism: after paying the first instalment, the Institute notifies the debtor to reimburse within a maximum of 30 working days from the notification and, once that period has passed without reimbursement, triggers the coercive collection system for social security debts by issuing the corresponding debt certificate².

There are duties on the receiving side too. Article 4 of Law 75/98 requires the child's legal representative, or the person in whose care the child is, to notify the court or the paying body of the cessation of, or any change in, the non-payment or the child's situation. Article 5 adds that amounts wrongly received must be repaid, with default interest where the duty to inform was deliberately breached, and that anyone omitting relevant facts is liable to criminal proceedings for fraud¹.