Protected assets of a maintenance recipient

The upper limit for the protected assets of a maintenance recipient has remained unchanged for almost 50 years. However, unused maintenance payments in the current year do not count towards the protected assets.

Maintenance payments can be claimed as an extraordinary burden, but only if the maintenance recipient has little or no assets. The law does not define how large these small "protected assets" may be. The tax authorities apply an upper limit of EUR 15,500 for the protected assets, which has remained essentially unchanged since 1975 and has been regularly confirmed by the Federal Fiscal Court. Even though the value limit has remained unchanged for almost 50 years, the Federal Fiscal Court has now also confirmed this limit for 2019 because it is still significantly higher than the basic allowance for the minimum subsistence level. Furthermore, the judges believe that civil and social law does not grant higher protected assets as a nest egg.

However, the judges also made an important clarification: if the maintenance payments from the current year have not yet been fully used up by the end of the year, this saved amount is generally only counted as deductible assets after the calendar year of the inflow, i.e. only from the following year. The Federal Fiscal Court justifies this with the obvious fact that maintenance payments in the year in which they are made do not count as part of the maintenance recipient's assets. They are intended for consumption and not for capital accumulation. Maintenance payments do not eliminate the neediness of the maintenance recipient, but are due precisely to this need for maintenance.