maintenance
noun · Unterhalt
Unterhalt in the family file, Wartung in the server room, and the machine swaps the rooms, Wartungspflichten for maintenance obligations reads like someone servicing the ex-spouse. Behind Unterhalt sits the 2008 principle English spousal-maintenance instincts miss, § 1569 BGB, after divorce each spouse provides for themselves, claims are the scoped exception.
Which translation, when
Why
The family architecture routes by relationship and by clock. Relatives in direct line owe each other Unterhalt, § 1601 BGB, child maintenance the leading case, measured, within the statutory frame of § 1610 BGB, in practice against the Düsseldorfer Tabelle, court guidance periodically updated, not a statute. Spouses run on two regimes, der Trennungsunterhalt of § 1361 BGB while separated but still married, and after the divorce the 2008 principle takes over, § 1569 BGB, each spouse provides for themselves, and maintenance claims survive only as the numbered exceptions that follow, childcare first among them, § 1570 BGB. So the English instinct of open-ended spousal maintenance overshoots a reform now nearly two decades old. The verbs are gewähren, zahlen, schulden, and the settlement vocabulary runs on Unterhaltspflichten. The technical sense is legitimate German everywhere else, Wartung for machines, Instandhaltung for buildings, the landlord’s duty in the lease world, which is exactly why the swap survives proofreading, both registers are native, only one feeds a family. Capital maintenance, finally, belongs to the company-law shelf, die Kapitalerhaltung, another entry’s territory by vocabulary alone.
Typical mistakes
- Wartungspflichten in a divorce settlement service the machinery, die Unterhaltspflichten feed the family, and the slip survives because both are perfectly normal German.
- The post-divorce default is self-support, § 1569 BGB, maintenance claims are the numbered exceptions, § 1570 BGB leading them, so English lifetime-maintenance instincts overshoot the 2008 reform.
- The Düsseldorfer Tabelle is guidance, court practice periodically updated, not a statute, so citing it as law mistakes the ranking of the sources even where the numbers are right.
What matters
Separation agreements route the word by clock: maintenance pending suit is der Trennungsunterhalt, § 1361 BGB, post-divorce maintenance runs only through the numbered claims behind § 1569 BGB, child maintenance follows § 1601 BGB with the Düsseldorfer Tabelle as working guidance. The clause on Wartungspflichten des Ehemanns would schedule him like a boiler.
What the machine misses
Maintenance swings between Unterhalt and Wartung in machine output on scene cues, and mixed documents defeat the cues, a settlement mentioning the house, the car and the children collects Wartungspflichten where families owe Unterhalt. The system behind the word is the second loss, post-divorce German maintenance is exception, not default, and the translated lifetime expectation was reformed away in 2008.
Examples
| maintenance obligations | die Unterhaltspflichten |
| child maintenance | der Kindesunterhalt |
| maintenance pending suit | der Trennungsunterhalt |
| maintenance window | das Wartungsfenster |