Child Maintenance: Falsely Claiming School Attendance | Investigations by Our Detective Agency in Würzburg

No Contact, Yet Maintenance Demands

For 21 years, Mr Roth (all names changed) paid maintenance for his daughter Caroline Frege from Würzburg, whom he never got to meet in person, as the child’s mother had refused any contact from birth. When Caroline reached adulthood, Mr Roth, residing in Bern, Switzerland, made several postal attempts to contact her, but received no direct response. Instead, the mother informed him that Caroline did not wish to have anything to do with him. From this rejection, doubts gradually arose for Mr Roth. Did Caroline ever receive his letters? Was she really still attending school? Did the monthly child maintenance actually reach her? The mother maintained that Caroline, now 22, still attended school, lived in the mother’s apartment, had no regular income and no personal bank account, which was why maintenance payments were always transferred to the mother’s account. The claim about the bank account seemed particularly suspicious, as almost every adult in Germany has their own account.

 

Due to these questionable points, Mr Roth sought the advice and services of our experienced detective agency in Würzburg*. Through surveillance of the daughter, we were to verify whether the mother’s statements about maintenance were correct or if this was a case of child maintenance fraud.

Waiting for Caroline – No Sign of the Subject

The first three days of surveillance by our Würzburg detectives were overshadowed by a significant problem: neither Caroline Frege nor her mother appeared at the registered and alleged residential address. Instead, investigators repeatedly observed an elderly woman (around 80 years or older) at the windows of the relevant apartment in the multi-family building. Although the surname of mother and daughter appeared on the doorbell and mailbox, this could have been a deliberate ploy to use the address for postal purposes. This led investigators to suspect that the subject did not actually live at this address – which, on one hand, supported Mr Roth’s doubts, but on the other hand, made observation impossible without a known residence.

 

To gather new leads at Caroline’s alleged school, our two-person detective team split on the third day: one remained at the known address, the other went to the school. Caroline did not appear there either, and no information on her whereabouts was obtained. The mother was observed entering the building with her own key, spending about half an hour inside, leaving with several letters, and driving away. Our detectives followed her, but she parked in an underground garage connected to a large complex with numerous house numbers and tenants, making it impossible to determine which area she entered afterward. Although the detectives checked all doorbells, the mother’s name did not appear on any of them.

New Address = New Opportunity for Our Würzburg Detectives

In consultation with Mr Roth, a fourth observation attempt was made at the known address rather than the newly discovered, harder-to-monitor complex. Shortly before the planned end of surveillance, the subject actually appeared on the street leading to the supposed residence. She did not enter the building with a personal key but rang at her alleged apartment and was let in. Later, Caroline left the building accompanied by the elderly woman seen at the windows. Both took public transport to a kindergarten and participated in a Martinmas procession, with no apparent connection to any of the children there. Afterwards, Caroline returned the elderly woman home, spent a brief time in the apartment, and then took a bus to another address in Würzburg where she stayed overnight. The doorbell did not show her name, but a “WG A.R., C.F., K.R.” suggested a possible shared flat including Caroline Frege (C.F.) as a resident.

 

Surveillance continued into the next day, allowing verification of:

• School attendance
• Employment activity
• Actual residence at the new address
• Living arrangement with the mother

 

The only caveat: it was a Saturday.

Sparsely Eventful — But Informative

The subject was successfully recorded. To avoid wasting this opportunity and to be certain Caroline actually resided at the new address, Mr Roth agreed that surveillance should continue on Saturday. As expected, the subject neither attended school that day nor performed any paid work. Instead she spent a few hours shopping in the city centre, had a kebab and then withdrew to the new dwelling for the rest of the chilly November day. While not a busy day, it nevertheless provided our Würzburg investigators with two important indications:

 

Firstly, the probability that Caroline lived at the new address increased because she returned there in the evening and because her surname was displayed on the internal flat letterbox (our investigators had been unable to check the internal letterbox the previous day due to lack of time). Secondly, Caroline made a cash withdrawal with a bank card at a Sparkasse cash machine (ATM), which proved that she had at least control over an account and — most likely — even held her own account. The two newly identified addresses for mother and daughter therefore strongly suggested that they did not, as claimed, share a household and bank account.

Breaches Of The Duty To Inform

In the following weeks our investigators in Würzburg carried out repeated spot daytime surveillance on different weekdays. Over time the evidence established that the subject:

• did in fact live permanently at the new address,
• regularly visited the original registered property to see the elderly woman,
• attended school — but only on two out of five weekdays,
• on the other three weekdays worked at a service company as an apprentice.

 

Under current German case law, income earned by a child during vocational training must be taken into account when assessing an entitlement to maintenance. Consequently Caroline’s employment could lead to a reduction or even the cessation of her maintenance entitlement depending on the level of her apprenticeship pay. The commencement of employment and the amount of remuneration should have been disclosed to the maintenance payer, Mr Roth. If the omission had been deliberate, it could constitute fraud. To clarify the question of intent, and to determine responsibility (mother, daughter or both), our Würzburg office took two additional steps.

A Clarifying Conversation Between Investigators And The Subject

After the surveillance concluded, an investigator — acting under a power of attorney from the client — obtained a school certificate for the subject. The certificate confirmed the pupil status (part-time / dual system), but did not indicate whether Caroline actually attended classes to the required extent. More importantly, the certificate showed that Caroline had held that status for over two years. The last time the mother had confirmed the daughter’s pupil status and explicitly stated that Caroline had no income was less than a year earlier. Intent was therefore likely; an "accidental" failure to inform the maintenance payer was implausible.

 

As Mr Roth initially suspected that his letters had never reached the daughter, he was inclined from abroad to blame the mother. He therefore instructed our investigators to speak with his daughter about the overall situation. The results of that conversation, briefly summarised, were:

1. Caroline had never received any of her father’s contact attempts.

2. Her relationship with her mother had been strained for years. They had not lived together since Caroline was 17.

3. Caroline received no financial support from her mother and therefore also not the maintenance payments from her father.

4. Because Caroline received a sufficient apprenticeship allowance and had been earning income since turning 18, she would in any event no longer have been entitled to maintenance.

5. She did of course have her own bank account.

6. The elderly woman regularly visited at the original registered property turned out to be her grandmother.

7. Caroline expressed the wish to meet her father and provided the investigators with his telephone number.

 

With that the case for our investigators in Würzburg was closed. We later learned that father and daughter had arranged personal meetings and that relations had markedly improved. According to our most recent information Mr Roth was in advanced negotiations, conducted through lawyers, about repayment of the maintenance that had been wrongly appropriated over the years and about the detective fees incurred.

All names and locations have, for the protection of clients and subjects, of course been changed beyond recognition.

 

Kurtz Detective Agency Nuremberg

Äußere Bayreuther Straße 59

D-90409 Nuremberg

Tel.: +49 911 3782 0154

Email: kontakt@kurtz-detektei-nuernberg.de

Web: https://www.kurtz-detektei-nuernberg.de/en

Google: https://g.page/kurtz-detektei-nuernberg