Separated and divorced parents are sometimes faced with the question of who should bear the payment of expenses related to their children’s extracurricular activities.
Custody agreements and court decisions are often silent on the payment of extracurricular expenses.
These include expenses with sports (football, ballet, gymnastics, etc.), musical activities (guitar, piano, etc.), leisure activities, etc.
Some agreements and court decisions contain rules about the payment of these expenses. In most of these cases, they will stipulate that the costs of extracurricular activities in which both parents have decided to enrol their children will be borne in equal parts. In these cases, of course, both parents are required to pay for the expense.
What happens, then, in situations where there is no agreement and, even so, one of the parents decides to enrol the child in an extracurricular activity?
In these cases, and unless the Custody agreement or court decision provides otherwise, the expense will be borne entirely by that parent who unilaterally decided to enrol the child in the extracurricular activity.
It should be noted that the child’s enrolment in an extracurricular activity is not, in principle, a matter of particular importance that requires the consent of both parents. In fact, it will only be so in cases where such activities may pose a risk to the child’s life or physical integrity. In all other cases, enrolment in extracurricular activities should be considered an act of the child’s current life and, therefore, can be decided by the parent with whom the child is at that moment.