“Who’s paying for the new football boots?” “I already covered the school trip, how do we settle that?” “Is that actually in the parenting plan or not?”
Many co-parents assume the parenting plan covers all financial arrangements for the kids. That’s only partly true. The plan sets the foundation — but a large share of day-to-day costs is never explicitly named in it. That’s exactly where confusion, and sometimes friction, tends to start.
What the parenting plan does cover
In the Netherlands, a parenting plan is legally required whenever a couple with minor children separates. It always includes child maintenance (kinderalimentatie): the amount one parent pays the other (or contributes to a shared account) for the child’s fixed costs.
That amount isn’t arbitrary. Dutch courts and mediators calculate it using the Trema norms, updated annually by the Expertgroep Alimentatienormen (Expert Group on Maintenance Norms). Two factors decide the outcome:
- The child’s need — what a child costs, based on the net household income before separation (via the NIBUD tables) and the child’s age.
- Each parent’s capacity to pay — what each parent can financially contribute after separation.
In co-parenting arrangements with a roughly equal care split, a care discount often applies, and sometimes no maintenance is owed at all because both parents already cover daily costs directly during their own days. Child-related benefits and the general child allowance factor into this too, and can be split depending on the care arrangement. Child maintenance is also indexed automatically every year — parents cannot agree to opt out of that.
What the parenting plan usually doesn’t cover in detail
This is where it gets tricky: plans often include a general line like “other costs are shared proportionally,” but rarely a concrete process. Think of:
- Sports clubs, music lessons, or a school trip
- A new laptop, phone, or bicycle
- The excess (eigen risico) at the dentist or GP
- Birthday parties and gifts
- Clothing beyond the standard need
Who pays upfront? How and when does it get reimbursed? Does it count toward the “proportional” split, and if so, at what ratio? Without a concrete agreement, every individual expense turns into a new conversation — and that conversation tends to be about trust faster than it’s about money.
How to split this fairly and keep it organised
A few things that work well in practice, even when the parenting plan itself doesn’t go into detail:
- Agree on a split ratio for extra costs — usually the same ratio as the maintenance calculation, but you’re free to set your own.
- Set a threshold amount — for example: under €25, decide on your own; above that, check with each other first.
- Consider a shared child account, where both parents contribute proportionally and joint costs are paid from it.
- Log every expense immediately, ideally with a receipt attached — that prevents later disagreements about what was actually spent.
- Review the arrangement yearly, especially after an income change: capacity to pay shifts, and the split can move with it.
Where Harmoneaz helps
The whole “who pays for what” conversation gets a lot simpler when the admin isn’t scattered across chat messages and a shoebox of receipts, but lives in one central place.
Harmoneaz is built to give you that overview:
- Log costs with a photo of the receipt, linked directly to the right child
- Automatic split based on your agreed ratio, so you’re not doing the math yourself
- A clear overview of who covered what, and what’s still outstanding
- Parenting arrangements (including the cost split) recorded clearly, so you don’t have to argue over what was agreed
- Everything kept separate from personal chat history — practical, not emotionally loaded
In short
Child maintenance is only part of the financial picture. The real friction usually comes from the smaller, recurring costs the parenting plan doesn’t spell out. A clear agreement upfront — and a place to track that agreement and the expenses themselves — stops every pair of football boots from turning into a negotiation.
For the official child maintenance calculation and the current Trema norms, see Rijksoverheid.nl, and for personal advice, an MfN-registered mediator or a vFAS family law attorney.
Also read: Parenting plan in the Netherlands: steps, requirements and a checklist · Co-parenting without conflict: why business-like communication works · What does Harmoneaz cost? Subscriptions, free trials and how it works for co-parents · Making handover days easier for everyone (coming soon)
