Two things get confused constantly, and separating them makes everything easier.
Child maintenance is money for the children. It is owed because they are his children, and it does not depend on the marriage, on who left, on whose fault anything was, or on whether he sees them.
Spousal maintenance is money for you. It is discretionary, it depends on the type of marriage and the circumstances, and it is much less predictable.
Most women can pursue the first even where the second is difficult, and the first is usually the larger sum anyway.
Child maintenance
A parent’s duty to maintain a child is recognised across all three systems of family law in Nigeria and in child welfare legislation. A father does not stop owing it because the mother left, because he has remarried, because there is another household, or because he is angry.
He also does not get to attach conditions to it. Maintenance is not payment for access, and access is not payment for maintenance. Courts treat those as separate questions, and a man who stops paying because he was refused a visit, or a woman who refuses a visit because he stopped paying, will both be told the same thing.
What a court considers: the needs of the children, what they were used to, and what he can actually pay. School fees, medical costs, feeding, clothing, transport and housing all count.
Which court
It depends on your marriage and your state, which is why establishing the type of marriage comes first.
In a statutory divorce, the High Court hearing the petition deals with maintenance as part of it. Where there is no divorce petition, a family court or magistrate may be able to make an order for a child depending on your state. Customary Courts and Sharia Courts both deal with maintenance within their own systems, and in Islamic law the duty to maintain is well established and is one of the grounds on which a wife can seek dissolution.
You do not have to be divorced, or to be seeking a divorce, to ask for maintenance for a child.
What to bring
Cases are won on documents, and this is the part women arrive least prepared for.
- What the children cost. School fee receipts, medical bills, a written list of monthly expenses. Actual receipts beat estimates every time.
- What he earns. Payslips, a letter from an employer, bank statements, evidence of a business, rent he collects, vehicles, property.
- What he has been paying, or has stopped paying, with dates.
- Messages about money. Where he has boasted about income, refused to pay, or made threats about fees, keep them. People are careless in writing.
- What you earn, honestly. Understating it damages your credibility and is found out.
- Standard of living evidence. Where the children were in private school, or had particular medical care, that is relevant to what is reasonable.
If he is self-employed, or is paid in cash, or suddenly declares that the business has collapsed, that is expected and courts have seen it many times. Evidence of how the family actually lived — the rent, the cars, the school, the trips — is the counter to a declaration of poverty.
The part nobody warns you about
Getting an order and being paid are two different problems, and the second is harder.
Orders go unpaid. Payments start and stop. Amounts shrink. This is the single most common complaint we hear after a case has been won, and women are unprepared for it because everyone treats the judgment as the end.
What helps:
- Get it paid into your own account, by transfer, so that every payment and every failure is recorded. Cash payments become an argument about what was handed over.
- Keep a payment record from day one: what was ordered, what arrived, when. A year of that is what an enforcement application runs on.
- Ask about payment at source where he is a salaried employee. Deduction arranged through an employer is more reliable than a monthly decision, and a lawyer can advise whether it is available in your case.
- Go back to court early, when it is two months rather than two years. Courts respond better to a recent default, and the arrears are easier to prove.
- Do not trade it away. Women are regularly persuaded to accept less in exchange for peace, or to drop arrears to settle something else. Once given up it is generally gone.
Spousal maintenance
In a statutory divorce the High Court can order maintenance for a spouse, and it looks at the length of the marriage, the standard of living, the earning capacity and conduct of each party, contributions made to the family including at home, and what each will actually need afterwards.
Two things reduce it in practice. Awards are often modest, and the same enforcement problem applies. It is worth pursuing, and it is not usually the thing that makes a household work.
The more substantial questions are usually about property and about your own income, which is why what you are entitled to in property and getting back into work matter more to most women’s actual position than a maintenance figure does.
If he is paying nothing at all
Start the record today, even if you are not going to court yet. Dates, amounts, what was said. It costs nothing and it is what any later application is built on.
Do not wait until you have “enough”. Two months of clear default is a case. Two years of the same is a much harder case, because the first question will be why you did not come sooner.
And do not let it be settled inside the family in a way that leaves no record. Family mediation can work, but get whatever is agreed written down and signed, and keep paying it through an account.
What we can do
Legal support is one of our six programmes, and maintenance is one of the things it is used for most. That includes a lawyer who has done these applications, help assembling the documents, and somebody with you on the day.
We can also help with school fees directly while an application is running, because a court timetable and a school term do not have any relationship to each other.
Questions people ask
Can I claim maintenance without divorcing him?
For the children, generally yes, and you do not have to be divorced or seeking a divorce. Which court depends on your marriage type and your state.
He says he will only pay if he can see the children. Is that allowed?
No. Maintenance and access are separate questions and courts treat them that way. Neither one is payment for the other.
He says he has no money but he is clearly living well. What can I do?
Bring evidence of how the family actually lived — the rent, the vehicles, the school fees, the trips — alongside anything showing income. Courts have seen sudden business collapses many times.
He has an order against him and pays nothing. What now?
Go back to court, and go early. Two months of default is easier to prove and gets a better response than two years. Keep every payment going through your account so the record exists.
Should I accept less to keep the peace?
Think very carefully before you do. Arrears given up are generally gone, and the pressure to trade them away usually comes at the moment you are least able to resist it.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
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- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
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