Maintenance allowance

Financial support

During separation or divorce, new economic-financial and patrimonial conditions for the relationship to continue for both individuals in a different form need to be established.

The definition of the economic-financial conditions following the end of a matrimonial relationship, and therefore of the consequent maintenance allowance, can take place consensually (i.e. outside of a trial or judgement) when the two spouses reach a common agreement, with or without the involvement of their respective lawyers, or by judicial means (i.e. when a judge intervenes, third party to the parties directly involved, to establish what is best for both).

Private investigations within this framework concern all those aspects and novelties that occur after the judge has already ruled on the conditions to be applied in terms of maintenance allowance and that impact and change the previous status quo.

To give a few examples: cases where one party omits to tell the other that he/she has found a new job or that he/she receives new income from non-work sources; or that he/she has received a substantial inheritance; or that he/she has entered into a new stable and lasting cohabitation with another partner; or simply when it is ascertained that the lifestyle of one of the two parties involved is far superior to that declared at the time of separation (compulsive shopping, other frequent purchases, assiduous frequentation of restaurants, repeated trips, etc.).

Such facts, if correctly declared, would lead to a complete redrawing of the situation since they would clearly alter the weights and balances at play that had been appropriately balanced by the judge with regard to the maintenance allowance.

In the absence of an express report to the judge of all these new circumstances, the private detective can be decisive.

Detectives operating for Confidential through their investigative work may submit evidence that establishes a change from the previously known facts. Such findings may in fact favour the commissioning party, leading the judge to set a new, less burdensome maintenance allowance than previously established or even to cancel it altogether (revision of maintenance allowance).