I'm not originally German, but am a German citizen, as is my ex-husband. When we split a few years back, we were living in another EU country and our custody arrangement was made there.
My main goal then was to get me and my kid out of the marriage as quickly and with as little fuss as possible, not aiming to keep my kid away from his dad, just to get me out of the relationship and keep him out of a living situation which was growing increasingly inappropriate.
So I basically agreed that I didn't want anything from him (I did not), and we agreed with each other that we'd just split costs. I was granted physical custody, but we have gemeinsame Sorgerecht, which is fine. The court in our country of divorce said he had to arrange to pay for transport costs of visitation and we could arrange the rest on-the-fly, which hasn't worked out all that well in recent years (Dad is unwilling to interrupt his schedule to have kiddo visit, didn't pay for it fully, and almost never came to visit him because I wouldn't let him sleep at our place).
Anyway, his dad moved to CH a couple of years ago, and recently, so have we, though at quite a distance. It's nice because my kid could, theoretically, go see his dad when he wanted to. All well and good.
Buuut.
First of all, for the most part, he was only *splitting* the transport costs. So not even abiding by the agreement we had.
And then last year, when I was still in our previous country, after a couple of years of him just sending me the Kindergeld his canton gave him once a year and occasionally splitting medical expenses with me, I told him our "just split the costs" informal agreement wasn't working, because it costs more to raise a child than just paying half the dental bills and whatever that 2k/year CHF child benefit he was receiving would cover.
I work full time and was actually working in the infamous "Home Office" so that I could give my kid as much care as he needed, but our arrangement was patently unfair and I tried to make it more fair, unemotionally, by simply sending him the table our country used based on income to determine what the child support he would be paying would be had we gone to court about it, and showed him the calculation based on what my income at the time, had I not been the custodial parent, would have been.
My ex, who has some serious emotional regulation problems, absolutely flipped his shit, said I was vastly overestimating his income by using mine, and threatened me with a very silly and totally impossible legal consequence if I did not agree to the salary figure he quoted me.
I didn't disagree at all - none of this is really about me, it's about my kid. And most of the time, my ex was overly honest. So I agreed to his quote, he paid the money, and then he said we'd have to figure out what we did when the kiddo and I moved to CH.
So we've been here in CH a little bit, kiddo has started school, and it turns out, unsurprisingly, that school expenses for things like sports and outings and the like, as well as the expected items kids might need for school, are a both a little more numerous (bike helmets! outdoor gear for the mountains!) and little more dear (welcome to Switzerland) than they would have been in our previous land. No real shock, but calculating my budget at month's end made it clear that the discussion we'd postponed until now has to happen. (It should be noted that I have the usual problem of getting through the first month on my previous salary, so it feels more urgent, but it really shouldn't be about a parent trying to stave off financial problems. Child support money isn't for ME, something my ex does not understand.)
It is telling that the first thing he did when we got to CH was buy kiddo a GA Familia Kind Karte so that the terms of his transport agreement are covered, but I am afraid that is no longer going to cut it. My kid doesn't really need it where we live; he needs food and clothes and a roof over his head and a working bicycle. But anyway.
I looked up how child support is calculated in CH, because while it caused my ex to freak out last time, I still feel like it's better if I provide unemotional facts rather than try to argue about whatever he feels is worth subsidising and what not. As best I can see, as the only time negotiated for him in the custody agreement is that he takes half of each longer school break, this is a case involving alleiniger Obhut (with me) with gemeinsame Sorgerecht. All well and good.
Now, I don't know my ex's income really, but I looked up starting salaries where he works (a state institution) at his posiition level, and it is quite clear that he was... understating his net income by quite a bit. I don't really care about this except that I REALLY don't like being lied to. And it is a message that I can expect to be lied to again, more importantly, and probably cannot negotiate in good faith with this person.
Anyhow. So from what I can see, we have very similar incomes, both of which fall within the general range for the average case of being responsible for child support. This last year, my ex was effectively paying me (after I complained) about 5k per annum in support, and I wasn't complaining based on the fact that apparently I was making so much more than him.
(I wasn't.)
And then I found out how much he would be expected to pay here, regardless of where his income fell in this range. (More than twice as much, with good reason.)
Which makes me think he's going to read the link I sent him to how child support is calculated here and lose his mind at me again, since he was obviously unwilling to pay half of that on the same salary. (I have little sympathy - I don't begrudge him his vacations and hobbies, but I'd like to be able to have some too instead of every dime being spent on raising my family.)
I am hoping he will look at that, agree to it, and pay what would be expected from him here. But... I kind of doubt it.
I'll probably get an ad hominum attack in response. And he is kind of a scary person when angry, which is why I have never pursued it formally before.
And so here's the question, after all of that: if two EU citizens have a custody arrangement negotiated in another country (where the arrangement also states, constantly, "in absence of a better agreement", so it is explicitly changeable) and the divorce has long since past, but the terms of the custody agreement are deeply unequal, I know that a renegotiation is always possible. I don't think any party involved wants to change where my son lives, and I in no way want to prevent my ex's access to his son. However, I DO want to revert to the state norm for our situation. As my ex is *highly* unlikely to volunteer to do this on his own (he will first likely propose that the CHF 680 he paid for the GA pass was enough for the year, and then revert to something equally ridiculous), what would the steps be for negotiating this situation here in CH? (I am not rolling in money right now, which is part of the problem, so I'm also interested in cost-effective solutions, but I understand that may not be possible. I am also nervous about this, because my ex gets extremely ugly whenever he is challenged with anything, and I'm a bit afraid of him in this respect, so any suggestions are appreciated.)