Criteria for poverty and determining the maintenance payment amount in welfare allowance

The subject of our thesis consists of the matters of "Criteria for poverty and determining the maintenance payment amount in welfare allowance". Although welfare allowance institution is regulated in the 175th article of Turkish Civil Code, there is no regulation available concerning according to which conditions the spouse to claim welfare allowance may be provided with welfare allowance and according to which conditions she may not be provided with welfare allowance within the content of the provision. Likewise, certain formulas and criteria related to the calculation of welfare allowance amount has not been designated in the law text, only the term "in proportion to the financial power of the other party" has been used. According to the regulation in the code, welfare allowance is a type of allowance that can be claimed indefinitely by the party that can become impoverished due to the divorce from the other party in proportion to his/her financial power on condition that claiming party does not have gross negligence, and the amount of which is appraised by the judge. Before the matters of criteria for poverty and calculating maintenance payment amount were subjected to evaluation within our study, explanations related to the maintenance payment and poverty were made; an emphasis was made on legal characteristics of maintenance payment and general features of the maintenance payment concept within the framework of doctrine and Court of appeals tendency. To which maintenance type among the other maintenance payment types does the concept of welfare allowance belong to in the Turkish civil code doctrine has been mentioned and afterwards, information has been relayed in titles related to the matters of criteria for poverty and determining the maintenance payment amount in welfare allowance which is the main subject of our study by explaining which conditions stated in 175th article of Turkish Civil Code should take place in order to claim welfare allowance, views in the doctrine has been touched on and law texts concerning the perspective of Court of Appeals have been submitted. After having mentioned the cases of increasing, decreasing, or totally cancelling the maintenance payment amount related to the matter of determining the maintenance payment amount, an emphasis was put on the matters that maintenance payment amount can be designated as agreed by being approved by the judge. Welfare allowance claim can be put forward during the suit for divorce, or by a separate suit that can be filed after the suit for divorce. Besides, as increasing, decreasing, and cancelling the maintenance payment amount cases also undergo a litigation process, procedural provisions were mentioned in the last part of our study and our study was finalized. Keywords: Maintenance Payment, Welfare Allowance, Criteria for Poverty.