Family law: separation, custody, maintenance

Die Alimente looks like « alimony » and lands on the wrong person. Both words go back to the Latin for nourishment, but they settled on different payees. Alimony, chiefly an American word, is money for a former spouse; British law says spousal maintenance, and German says der nacheheliche Unterhalt. Alimente is money for a child, and the word carries its history with it: for generations it was what a father paid for a child born outside marriage, which is why it still sounds faintly like gossip. It is colloquial, rather dated, and exists only in the plural — er zahlt Alimente, never a singular. No court writes it. In a ruling, a lawyer’s letter or a form from the youth welfare office the same money is der Kindesunterhalt, and the share paid in money rather than in daily care is der Barunterhalt.