What does “pensão alimentícia” mean in Portuguese?

Pensão alimentícia is the court-ordered money a parent pays toward a child’s upkeep — child support, or alimony between ex-spouses. It reads literally as “food pension,” from alimentos, the legal term for everything a dependant needs to live on: food, housing, schooling, health care. In Brazil it is serious business, since unpaid pensão is one of the very few civil debts that can put someone in jail.

Careful with pensão alone: unqualified it usually means a boarding house or small guesthouse, and it also covers pensions in the retirement sense (pensão por morte). The adjective is what fixes the meaning. In the clip the pharmacist delivers the gossip deadpan: a polícia está atrás dele, parece que ele está devendo pensão alimentícia — “the police are after him, seems he owes child support.”