In the conditions of martial law, there are rare situations when a woman with a child went abroad or to another city as an internally displaced person due to the impossibility of living at the place of residence. It is good if the child’s father helps financially and it is a decent amount of money. And if not?
How to behave if the husband or father of the child says that his salary has been reduced, he has been fired, he cannot find a job, he does not want to work where he does not like or he is not satisfied with the salary, so he will wait until he is offered more acceptable options? He gives or throws sometimes one thousand or one and a half hryvnias on the card, and sometimes even less, and not every month, and then spreads his hands – “well, that’s how it turned out… there is no money…”. You wait a month, two, three… but nothing changes at night. There is a way out, and it is a simple and effective means – the collection of alimony!
About him experts of the “Repeshko and Partners” bar association answered the journalists of “FAKT” IA.
Even the stay of a woman abroad with a child is not a hopeless situation. Here, modern technologies will come to the rescue, such as, for example, an electronic court, where an electronic digital signature is required to work in the system, and sometimes a VPN, because the system most often blocks entrances from abroad. There is also a simpler and more understandable option – contacting a lawyer with whom it is possible to conclude a contract even at a distance.
The main thing you need to know is that child support can be collected both while married and at any time after the divorce, if the need arises. The amount of alimony can be awarded in two variants – a share of the child’s father’s income and a fixed amount of money. Alimony can be collected based on a claim, or can be collected based on an application for the issuance of a court order. It is the last type that is the most effective and fastest way to get child support and that’s why.
The state has officially established a guaranteed amount of alimony in a fixed monetary amount. Art. 183 of the Family Code of Ukraine states that the parent or other legal representative of the child, with whom the child lives, has the right to apply to the court for the issuance of a court order for the collection of alimony in the amount of one quarter for one child, one third for two children, and one third for three or more children – half of the salary (income) of the alimony payer, but no more than ten subsistence minimums per child of the appropriate age for each child.
In addition, there is an amount of alimony below which the payer cannot pay alimony. This amount is revised every year and is established by the relevant law on the State Budget of Ukraine for 2024. According to him, the subsistence minimum for children under the age of 6 is UAH 2,563, for children aged 6 to 18 – UAH 3,196. The amount of alimony in this case cannot be less than 50% of the specified amount, i.e. UAH 1,281.5 for children under 6 years of age and UAH 1,598 for children aged 6 to 18, respectively.
“All this is wonderful” – you say. And if the child’s father does not work? If the child’s father does not work anywhere, at least officially, this does not mean that nothing can be taken from him and he does not owe anything to anyone. In this case, alimony is calculated by the state executive, based on the average salary in the area where the alimony payer is registered. For example: a woman has one child aged five years. If the husband’s salary is UAH 24,000, there will be alimony in the amount of UAH 6,000. If the child’s father does not work anywhere officially, then the amount of alimony will be approximately UAH 4,484 (in the third quarter of 2023, the average monthly salary in Ukraine was UAH 17,937). The figures are conditional and used purely as an example.
An application for the issuance of a court order can be submitted to the court of first instance both at the registered place of residence or stay of the debtor (father of the child) and at the registered place of residence or stay of the applicant (mother or legal representative of the child). Here it is necessary to look at which court is closer or which has less workload and did not change its jurisdiction due to martial law. The court considers the application for the issuance of a court order within 5 days from the date of its receipt, while the consideration is conducted without a court session and notification of the applicant and the debtor
According to Clause 3, Part 1, Art. 5 of the Law of Ukraine “On Court Fees” plaintiffs in alimony recovery cases, as well as applicants in the case of filing an application for a court order for alimony recovery, are exempted from paying a court fee during the consideration of a case in all court instances. Thus, the court fee for submitting an application for the issuance of a court order for the collection of alimony is not paid.
A court order for the collection of alimony in itself is an executive document that must be delivered (sent by mail) to the state bailiff. So, if you file an application for a court order to collect alimony today and mail it to the court, he will receive it in three days, review it within five days and issue an order, which will then also be mailed to you at your request, then all the procedure for obtaining it can take from one to two months – it depends on the workload of the court and its location, taking into account postal traffic. After that, the order for the collection of alimony can be transferred to the state executor.
There is only one nuance – these are the conditions under which a court order is issued. There are only two of them – firstly, in the application for the issuance of a court order, the RNOKPP of the child’s father must be indicated, and secondly, he must have a registered place of residence. If any of these conditions are absent, you do not know the identification code of the father of the child or his place of registration or he is not registered anywhere at all, then in this case alimony will be collected not by order, but by legal action – by filing a claim for the collection of alimony . This is a longer procedure in terms of time – it can be up to six months or even more – it all depends on many circumstances. However, if we talk about the result – the same amounts of alimony from the income of the child’s father are also guaranteed. The court fee for filing a claim for the recovery of alimony is also not paid by the plaintiff, but in the future the state will still collect it from the defendant. As of 2024, the court fee to be paid by the alimony payer will amount to UAH 1,211.20.
Alimony in a fixed amount of money is not very relevant at the moment, firstly, in connection with rapid inflation, secondly, you must prove to the court why exactly such an amount is necessary for the child to ensure its development. In our practice recently, there were many women who came with the same problems – they received child support in the amount of 700 UAH, 1000 UAH according to the court’s decision… It is clear that the specified amounts do not correspond to modern reality in any way, women have the right to submit an application for changes in the amount of alimony collection or for a change in the method of collection of alimony, but all this is a legal proceeding, which, as we recall, may well last 6 months or more.
One more important point. Alimony is assigned from the date of submission of the application to the court. The law states that the court can collect alimony for the previous time, but the court must prove that you have been trying to get alimony for the child all that time, but nothing has worked out for you. This is where the biggest difficulties lie, because stories alone about the fact that you called to demand alimony, and the child’s father promised, but never paid the court, are not enough at all. These must be proper and admissible evidence – if communication is in messengers, then the phone numbers must be confirmed with reference to the person. The signature “Vasya’s ex-husband” is not proper and admissible evidence that the phone number belongs to “Vasya”. If it is a receipt with an obligation to pay alimony from the new year, then it must be written personally by the hand of the person from whom alimony is collected, etc. Court practice has recently followed the path that alimony is charged precisely from the date of submission of the application to the court.
As for the text of statements that are submitted to the court, they must contain the name of the court to which the application is submitted, the surname, first name and patronymic of the applicant and the debtor in injunctive proceedings or of the plaintiff and the defendant in legal proceedings, their place of residence, the registration number of the taxpayer’s registration card, if available, or the number and series of the passport if RNOCPP absent due to religious beliefs or unknown to you, as well as official e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and other data, if known to the applicant, which identify the debtor, requirements for the collection of alimony and the circumstances on which they are based, a list of evidence with which the applicant/plaintiff substantiates circumstances regarding his claim. Applications must be accompanied by photocopies of all documents in two copies – one for the court, the other for the debtor/defendant.
It should be noted that sometimes the situation requires the submission of additional, non-standard documents. For example, a woman, after breaking up her marriage with the child’s father, entered into a new marriage and received her husband’s surname. Now she has the last name “Kalinchenko”, and the child has the father’s last name – “Sydorenko”. In this case, a copy of the marriage certificate must be provided to the court. In addition, in various cases, these can be certificates of change of name, surname, a full extract from the act record of the child’s birth, etc.
Finally, a court order for the collection of alimony or a writ of execution based on the results of the review of the claim has been received. What’s next? And then – an appeal to the state executive service at the place of registration of the alimony payer. An application is submitted to this authority with a request to accept an executive document, a copy of the passport and RNOCPP of the child’s mother, a copy of the passport and RNOCPP of the child’s father (if available), the original of the court order or executive letter, a bank certificate indicating the details for which alimony is to be credited (for example, in Privat 24 such a certificate is taken without leaving home). The application can be delivered personally, entrusted to a lawyer or sent by any postal service.
Thus, the path of injunctive proceedings on alimony can take 1-2 months, the path of claim proceedings – up to half a year or more. The main thing is that the child will receive alimony, and the woman will stop being nervous and shaking money from the father of the child for her upkeep, not understanding whether it will be possible to shake something or not and in what amounts.
By the way, the modern world is changing and in practice there are already cases when the child’s place of residence is determined not with the mother, but with the father. In this version, the father of the child has all the same rights regarding the collection of alimony for the child, but from the woman. Everything that was described above applies to the woman as the payer of alimony, without making exceptions based on gender.
