What percentage is child support for 1 child?

The amount of alimony debts owed by Russians at the end of 2021 amounted to 152 billion rubles. Izvestia found this out by analyzing the reports of the Federal Bailiff Service (FSSP). Compared to last year, the number of debtors decreased slightly, but the amount of unpaid alimony increased by 13% and updated the historical record. Compared to 2012, alimony debts have increased almost eightfold.

Criminal alimony: greedy fathers will be sent to the stage

How the state fights against those who do not want to spend money on raising their own children

General concepts

Alimony payments are financial support that, according to the law, is provided to minor children living with a former spouse, or to disabled relatives living separately.

The most common situations that may result in alimony being awarded:

• disabled and needy parents in old age;
• a spouse (sometimes a former one) who has been declared incapacitated;
• the husband is obliged to provide financially for the pregnant wife;
• child support for minor children.

Providing material assistance can be provided in the form of property (toys, products, medicines, food), but most often it is provided in the form of cash. If the former spouses remain on good terms, there is a chance to agree on a voluntary agreement on the basis of which financial assistance will be provided to the child. If a compromise cannot be reached, the issue can be resolved in court. When one of the partners refuses to support the child, even if there is an appropriate decision, bailiffs are involved in collecting funds.

According to statistics, 98% of arrears in alimony payments are cases involving minor children. The Family Code stipulates that the amount of alimony depends on the number of children. One child receives about 25% of monthly official earnings. For three or more children, you need to pay about half of your income. For citizens who work unofficially and do not have a “white” salary, the amount of alimony payments will be fixed (one subsistence minimum per child according to the region of residence).

In what cases are reliefs provided for alimony obligations?

As practice shows, the coercive measure of collecting alimony payments may not be applicable in all cases. Civil procedural legislation and some articles of Family Law provide for ways to relax the debtor’s attitude towards alimony payments or terminate them, namely:

• making voluntary payments on the basis of an agreement concluded with the claimant;
• transfer of expensive property to pay off the entire amount of alimony;
• opening a child’s personal account and transferring funds to it;
• reducing the amount of monthly payment by filing a claim with a judicial authority (with the provision of evidence confirming the impossibility of payment established by a court decision);
• refusal of the claimant from the claims;
• the occurrence of circumstances stipulated by the agreement of the parties;
• living of a dependent with the payer;
• the child comes of age;
• death of one of the parties;
• challenging paternity in court;
• adoption of a dependent by another person, etc.

But it is worth noting that it is impossible to solve this issue on your own. Either one of the conditions must be specified in an agreement between spouses (children and parents), or settled in court.

Conclusion of a contractual agreement

If both parties (claimor and payer) have come to a mutual agreement that alimony obligations will be fulfilled voluntarily (without filing claims), then they are obliged to transfer all the agreed upon nuances to paper and notarize them. Otherwise, it will not have legal force.

The agreement can indicate how the obligations will be fulfilled:

• the entire amount at once (calculated individually);
• transferring into the ownership of the recipient expensive property that covers all his needs;
• in a fixed amount of money;
• as a percentage of the payer’s income;
• payments will be made on a specific date;
• by transfer to an account or in cash;
• official refusal of the claimant to pay;
• duration of the agreement;
• methods for terminating/reducing payments (in the event of a deterioration in the health of the payer, the spouse entering into a new marriage and the adoption of children by the new spouse, etc.);
• and other conditions that suit both parties to the agreement.

It can also indicate that if at least one condition is not fulfilled, one of the parties has the right to challenge it in court.

Transfer of expensive property for alimony payments

This method of exemption from monthly payments in favor of a child is provided for in Article 104 of the Family Code; the same article allows for a combination of methods for paying alimony.

In order to use one or another method of fulfilling your obligations in relation to a dependent, a number of mandatory conditions must be met:

• first of all, it is necessary to obtain an agreement/permission for these actions from the guardianship authority;
• The second action in this situation is to conclude an agreement about this in a notary’s office.

An oral agreement is not acceptable in this case. This is also impossible without permission from the guardianship authorities. All rights of the minor must be taken into account.

In hard cash

• Is alimony taken from a military man’s pension, length of service, and others?

Due to a deterioration in financial situation or health, the payer has the right to file a claim with a judicial authority to reduce the amount of payments or determine a specific monthly amount.

To do this, he will need indisputable proof of a fact that worsens his financial situation (confirmation of official income, medical report, etc.). It could also be such circumstances as the birth of a newborn in a newly created family, moving to the dependents of disabled parents or other relatives, etc.

Read: child support for the birth of a child in a second marriage.

Transfer to account

This method can be specified in a notarized agreement or by a court decision when the payer doubts that the funds are directly spent on the needs of the minor. In such a situation, he can open a personal savings deposit for the child in the bank and transfer alimony to him, which the child can receive upon reaching 18 years of age.

Who has the right to receive alimony?

Every child has the right to financial assistance from his parents. It is the responsibility of the child's legal guardian to request child support. Some parents negotiate among themselves and enter into a verbal agreement. Family law experts recommend regulating such issues exclusively in writing. This way, you will be able to avoid many unpleasant situations in the future.

According to 2010 statistics, there were 18 million families with minor children. About 6 million of them are fathers and mothers who are raising a child on their own. Only a third of them are officially divorced, widowed or never married. Officially, there are 2 million broken families. Accordingly, the spouse who does not live with the child is obliged to pay alimony. In addition, persons deprived of parental rights are not exempt from financial support. This is about 3.5 thousand annually. In 2012, government agencies had information about three million children who should receive child support. But of these, only about 1 million minors receive payments. However, this is only a small part. The rest of the data is not publicly available.

According to general information from government agencies, payments for minors range from 90 to 47 thousand rubles. The average alimony amount is 8 thousand rubles.

How many alimony debtors are there in Russia?

The Federal State Statistics Service is a federal body that has information about all political, social, demographic and economic processes. It also contains information about court cases regarding alimony.

There is a sad statistic: the more children a child support provider has, the higher the likelihood that he will shirk his responsibilities to provide for minors. The bulk of the court cases in which bailiffs are trying to recover material assets have been open for several years now. Despite the fact that the number of debtors is gradually decreasing, the amount of debt is growing.

The number of male defaulters is significantly higher than that of females. This is due to the fact that minor children are most often left with their mothers.

Penalties for debtors

Bailiffs who collect funds can use different methods of punishment for debtors. Here are just a few of them:

• impose a ban on traveling abroad;
• deprived of the right to re-register real estate or movable property;
• seize property;
• sell seized property;
• prohibit the use of a driver's license.

But on their own initiative, the bailiffs will not impose arrests or fines. Each claimant is obliged to independently monitor the progress of work. If authorized employees do not fully perform their duties, the claimant has the right to appeal to higher authorities. On the website of the Federal Bailiff Service you can check the status of the case. It is important to remember that the only person who is interested in the execution of a court decision is the claimant himself, acting on behalf of the minor.

How bailiffs deal with debtors

If a person does not pay alimony, bailiffs can block bank accounts, but there are also more sophisticated ways to influence debtors.

According to the Federal Bailiff Service, in the first half of 2021 alone, the agency issued almost 560 thousand decisions that prohibit alimony debtors from traveling abroad.

They prohibit the use of a driver’s license: bailiffs cannot deprive the debtor of his license, but he will not be able to use it. This is called a restriction on the use of a special right. The details of the debtor's driver's license are entered into the traffic police database, and the person does not have the right to drive, although the license itself remains with him.

We suggest you read: Is alimony deducted from the premium?

If the debt is large, the bailiffs can use several measures at once: seize accounts and property, prohibit traveling abroad. For example, a resident of Tatarstan sold an apartment to pay off 300 thousand rubles in alimony debt, after the bailiffs forbade him from selling his car or traveling abroad, and then they came and described the property.

The debtor may also be put on the wanted list. Novosibirsk bailiffs found an alimony worker who had entered military service under a contract in Chelyabinsk, 1,300 kilometers from home. The contract worker paid off a debt of 165 thousand rubles.

If a person does not pay off the debt no matter what, he may be prosecuted under Article 157 of the Criminal Code. The maximum penalty is a year in prison. In the first half of 2021, Russian courts received 30 thousand criminal cases under this article. Judges almost always take the children’s side—in six months, only seven acquittals were made in such cases.

In addition to the debt itself, the defaulter will also have to pay a penalty - 0.1% for each day of delay - which the second parent has the right to recover through the court.

A persistent defaulter may be deprived of parental rights. Also, if the debtor cannot be found within a year, he may be declared missing, and the child will be awarded a survivor’s pension. You can read how it works in our analysis.

How this happens in practice

Based on the collected statistics, employees of the executive service compiled a general portrait of the average alimony debtor:

• man aged 30 to 54 years;
• the total amount of alimony debt is about 150 thousand rubles;
• no permanent income, no official salary;
• does not travel abroad for vacation or seasonal work (since the bailiffs have already imposed a ban on leaving the country).

However, even with such an amount of data, it will only be possible to “knock out” the alimony debt from every tenth person. In order to achieve a positive result, the claimant must independently monitor the progress of the bailiffs’ work. Often it is not enough to simply obtain a court decision.

80% of Russian men evade alimony

According to data from the Legal Center of Lawyer Oleg Sukhov, about 80% of men in Russia currently evade alimony payments. Moreover, only 30% of women who have the right to alimony resolve the issue through the courts. Interestingly, the percentage of successful cases (collected alimony) is quite high. Thus, of all women who go to court, about 70% win cases in favor of themselves and their child. The amount of alimony directly depends on the transparency of the ex-spouse’s income “The best way to prevent problems that may arise due to the inability to accurately determine the amount of income of the ex-spouse is to enter into an agreement with him on the payment of alimony in a fixed amount with a notary,” advises lawyer Oleg Sukhov. “However, few women seek to formalize such an agreement at the stage of divorce. Taking into account the fact that, according to the law, alimony is currently not mandatory, the reason here may be either the spouse’s disagreement or the lack of hope to achieve alimony payment at all.” The question arises: what can you count on if a defaulter receiving “gray” income lives in an expensive apartment and drives a luxury car, and all his property is registered in the name of third parties? This question remains open for now. From an unemployed person who has no income, alimony can be recovered in an amount calculated based on the subsistence level. But this does not solve the problem, because the amount of such alimony will be negligible. For more than a tenth of families, alimony payments do not exceed 300 rubles per month, and for a quarter of families - 500 rubles. The average monthly alimony in Russia is less than 1.6 thousand rubles. For about half of families, this is only 10% of their total cash income.

The FSSP goes looking... “After divorcing his wife, the father of two daughters was married three times. Moreover, each time he took the surname of his new wife, changed his place of residence and job. It was not possible to leave the persistent ex-wife, as well as the bailiffs, says lawyer Oleg Sukhov. “However, this case is just one of many. Getting alimony in hand is much more difficult than a court decision to collect it. The defaulter can even change his country of residence, and the writ of execution will literally “chase” after him. According to official data from the Federal Bailiff Service, 80–85 thousand alimony debtors are sought annually.”

Men doubt whether their child support payments are being received. Realities show that women sometimes try to protect the child from communicating with the father after the spouses divorce. As a result, there is an opinion among men that they pay alimony not to the child, but to their ex-wife. However, while some women seek to isolate the family from the man, others, on the contrary, leave the child to the latter, thereby becoming debtors for alimony. One of these people came up with the most sophisticated ways to hide: she got home through a window, went into the forest to pick mushrooms for two days, and even set traps in her house.

How to deal with defaulters? Most often, proposals boil down to changing the system of state control over alimony payments. Among the alternative solutions, women were in favor of providing their ex-husband with documents confirming all expenses for the child; men even came to the conclusion that a woman should marry someone “with whom she can come to an agreement... and if a man doesn’t want to pay, then he won’t pay " One of the latest proposals of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, put up for discussion, was the creation of a specialized state fund for the collection of funds from alimony defaulters, and the introduction of a state minimum alimony standard of no less than 25% of the subsistence level of a child who is evading payment during the search period. alimony of a person. “It seems that such a bill will both partially ensure the interest of mothers and stimulate the interest of the competent authorities in finding the defaulter and bringing him to justice,” sums up lawyer Oleg Sukhov.

Oleg Sukhov.