The operation of the Maintenance fund is intended for beneficiaries children who have been allocated maintenance under a final court ruling, a temporary injunction or an agreement with the social security department which the person liable is not paying. It is deemed that a person liable to pay maintenance is defaulting on payment if maintenance has not been paid for three consecutive months or is being paid irregularly. Irregular payment occurs if the person liable to pay maintenance owes at least three monthly maintenance payments for the last 12 months. Any child who is a Slovene national permanently residing in the Republic of Slovenia or a foreign national permanently residing in the Republic of Slovenia if so agreed by bilateral agreement or by way of reciprocity is entitled to maintenance replacement. In order to enforce this right appropriate proceedings for recovering maintenance must have been initiated and unsuccessfully concluded or ongoing for over three months. Entitlement to maintenance replacement continues until the age of 15 or, provided the child is not employed, until the age of 18.
The Fund began receiving claims for maintenance payments on 18 October 1999, leaving us with over nine years\\\' experience in this field.
It should be noted that an individual case can be on file for up to 18 years, starting with the application. During this time the circumstances impacting the right to maintenance replacement could change several times, while the Fund must take every change into account and act accordingly. Thus the child\\\'s age influences the amount of maintenance, while any payments on the part of the person liable to pay maintenance could result in a stop in replacement payments. After reaching age 15 a child may seek employment, whereby the right to maintenance replacement expires. Also, the level of maintenance can change as a result of a court ruling.
Information about the number of applications filed on behalf of children in 2008 thus only applies to the number of new applications, while a major part of our operations focuses on following up on past applications that were issued positive decisions and who are receiving regular payments (or those payments are stopped if maintenance is duly paid). From the start of the Fund\\\'s operation (18 October 1999 31 December 2008) 6,856 applications for 8,918 children have been filed.
The Fund claims recovery of the paid maintenance replacement from the person liable to pay maintenance. The Fund focused actively on this demanding area of debt recovery. Particular emphasis was placed on drafting a quality executive proposal, the basis of successful debt recovery. A lot of work was invested in gathering information that would facilitate effective recovery, though it should be noted that these are usually complex and lengthy cases. In assessing the success rate of debt recovery one should also note that the Fund\\\'s debtors are such that it is very difficult to recover any debt from them. One of the requirements for approving maintenance replacement payments is that an execution on the part of the legal guardian was unsuccessful in court or has been taking more than three months. It should also be noted that the very existence of the Maintenance Fund forced many of those liable to pay maintenance to actually do so and to settle relations with the child\\\'s legal guardian.