  We consider time discretization methods for abstract parabolic problems with
inhomogeneous linear constraints. Prototype examples that fit into the general
framework are the heat equation with inhomogeneous (time dependent) Dirichlet
boundary conditions and the time dependent Stokes equation with an
inhomogeneous divergence constraint. Two common ways of treating such linear
constraints, namely explicit or implicit (via Lagrange multipliers) are
studied. These different treatments lead to different variational formulations
of the parabolic problem. For these formulations we introduce a modification of
the standard discontinuous Galerkin (DG) time discretization method in which an
appropriate projection is used in the discretization of the constraint. For
these discretizations (optimal) error bounds, including superconvergence
results, are derived. Discretization error bounds for the Lagrange multiplier
are presented. Results of experiments confirm the theoretically predicted
optimal convergence rates and show that without the modification the (standard)
DG method has sub-optimal convergence behavior.
