This book grew out of a major European Union (EU) funded project on the Hague Maintenance Convention of 2007 and on the EU Maintenance Regulation of 2009. The project involved carrying out analytical research on the implementation into national law of the EU Regulation and empirical research on the first year of its operation in practice. The project also engaged international experts in a major conference on recovery of maintenance in the EU and worldwide in Heidelberg in March 2013.
The contributions in this book are the revised, refereed and edited versions of the best papers that were given at the conference. The book is divided into two parts: (i) the world - looking at the Hague Convention and (ii) the EU - looking at the Maintenance Regulation. This is the first study to look carefully at both of the new cross-border maintenance regimes globally and in Europe and to begin the examination of the practical operation of the latter regime.