Recovery of Maintenance at the Heart of the Heidelberg Conference

The German Institute for Youth Human Services and family Law (DIJuF) offers a platform for professional dialogue between institutions and occupational groups which are involved in youth welfare and family law.

This long time prepared conference was organized by the DIJuF, in partnership with the Universities of Heidelberg and Aberdeen (Scotland). Associate partners were the German Federal Ministry of Justice, the Hague Convention on Private International Law, the National Chid Enforcement Association (NCSEA) and the University of Lyon (France). The conference was the key element of an EU funded project.

The recovery of maintenance in Europe and in the world is basically carried out from two legal documents of different nature: the Hague convention of 23 November 2007 on the International recovery of Child Support and other forms of Family Maintenance, signed by the European Union for its Member States, and the Council regulation (EC) No 4/2009 of 18 December 2008 on maintenance obligations, which entered into force on 18 June 2011.

The Heidelberg conference aimed at providing an opportunity for the participants to share their experiences, increase their mutual knowledge of child support, family maintenance law, proceedings and enforcement in their respective countries or organizations, and to discuss unresolved issues and develop models for good practice.

The UIHJ was represented by its First Secretary, Mathieu Chardon. Over 200 participants coming from over 50 countries of the five continents were in attendance. During four days, the Heidelberg conference offered a mix between plenary sessions and 21 workshops including over a hundred lecturers.

The exceptional organisation of the huge conference has to be acknowledged, as well as its friendly spirit despite the great technicality of many topics.

Among the lecturers were two members of the Scientific Council of the UIHJ: Burkhard Hess, Director and scientific member of the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law, Luxembourg, and Frédérique Ferrand, tenure professor at the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 (France).

The opening ceremony gave the opportunity to the organisers to welcome the participants and the lecturers, while giving an overview of the works that was about to begin. The speakers of the ceremony were Thomas Mörsberger, chairman of the Executive board of the DIJuF, Elisabeth Unger, on behalf of Thomas Pfeiffer, Managing director of the Institute for Comparative Law, Conflict of Laws and International Business Law of the University of Heidelberg, Hans van Loon, Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, Birgit Grundmann, State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Justice, and Thomas Meysen, Professional Director of the DIJuF.

     
Many topics were approached during the plenary sessions, including several presentations on the relations between the European Regulation and the Hague Convention, topics relating to several aspects of maintenance law at international level, examples of the organization of the recovery of maintenance obligations in several parts of the world (Europe, Common Wealth African countries, Latin America, U.S., Australia or Honk Kong). Technical aspects relating to IT were also covered.
 
The presentations will be published in 2014.

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