The notion of maintenance refers to the act and the result of maintaining or maintaining. This verb (to maintain), for its part, has several meanings: in this case we are interested in focusing on the action of providing an individual with the necessary means for their subsistence.
Maintenance, therefore, consists of financially supporting someone or something. Whoever is in charge of maintenance provides the resources so that the subject or entity is in a position to survive.
A father, for example, must take care of the support of his children. This means that the parent has the obligation to ensure that their descendants eat properly, receive an education that provides them with tools for the future, live in an environment of love and protection, and so on.
The characteristics and scope of maintenance depend on each legislation. The laws establish how each parent has to resolve this issue and ensure support.
After a separation and subsequent divorce, parents must go through a very delicate stage in which to organize the maintenance of minor children. First of all, we must point out that the age limit to receive it is not the same in all countries, although in general it does not exceed eighteen years.
In an ideal family, where despite the breakup of the couple the parents do not put their own relationship problems before the health and happiness of their children, solving the issues related to maintenance is not so difficult, despite the fact that it involves a series of procedures of varying complexity. However, conflict situations are more common, in which children always lose out.
Take the case of the maintenance of a non-governmental organization dedicated to caring for the environment. It is an association made up of activists who carry out days of cleaning public spaces and awareness campaigns to minimize pollution. To cover the expenses, the members of the NGO ask for donations from the neighbors and organize raffles with prizes that various companies contribute. In addition, the entity receives a subsidy from the government. In this way, maintenance is possible thanks to the collaboration of the people and the state contribution. This money is totally used to cover the expenses, since the members of the group do not get paid and the NGO does not seek profit.
Many times we confuse the meaning of the word maintenance with maintenance , especially when it is used in reference to a company or organization. However, their definitions are different. While the maintenance of a company is linked to the supply, storage and handling of spare parts, pieces and merchandise for later use, maintenance is a series of tasks and measures that seek to prevent or correct problems in the operation of machinery, among others possibilities.
When we talk about the care of a person we do not say maintenance , but maintenance . We make this distinction intuitively, although we do not know how to define each term in depth, simply because in everyday speech they are never interchanged in this context. However, if we refer to their respective etymologies, we note that they share two of their lexical components, although with certain differences: both begin with manu ("hand"); they continue with tenere , a verb that for maintenance is translated as "keep, defend " while for maintenance, as "dominate, retain"; maintenance also ends with the suffix -ment , which indicates "medium or instrument."