The government opposed the creation of the Alimony Fund

The government does not support the idea of ​​​​creating a State Alimony Fund, from which benefits would be paid to children whose parents shirk their duties. The draft negative response to the relevant bill states that measures to solve the problem of malicious alimony workers in Russia are already being taken, and it is not clear where to get the funds to create the fund.

The author of the initiative, head of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children Nina Ostanina (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), sent it to the government for feedback even before it was submitted to the State Duma.

According to the FSSP, as of January 1, 2023, the number of unfinished enforcement proceedings for the collection of alimony exceeded 771 thousand, and the debt on them amounted to more than 150 billion rubles, the deputy recalls, and proposes to create a State Alimony Fund under the government, which will maintain a register of malicious alimony recipients.

The explanatory note to the bill states that those who are brought to administrative or criminal liability will be included in this register. Let us remind you: Article 157 of the Criminal Code for repeated failure to pay child support without good reason promises up to a year of correctional or forced labor, or even up to a year in prison.

For the first time, if non-payment occurred within two months or more from the date of initiation of enforcement proceedings, Article 5.35.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses threatens mandatory work with an alternative in the form of 10 – 15 days of administrative arrest.

According to the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in 2022, 48,934 people were punished criminally for failure to pay child support, and 104,213 people were punished administratively for failure to pay child support.

By the way, a year and a half ago, the Ministry of Justice posted for public discussion its draft law on the register of malicious alimony recipients: in the opinion of the department, information about them should be publicly available until the debt is fully repaid. But he never made it to the State Duma…

The size of the monthly payment from the fund should be at least half of the subsistence level for children in the constituent entity of the Russian Federation where the child lives, Ms. Ostanina believes. What amounts can we talk about? It’s easy to calculate if you know that the regional cost of living per child in 2023 in Moscow, for example, is 18,770, in the Chelyabinsk region – 14,140, ​​in St. Petersburg – 14,641, in the Republic of Tyva – 14,433 rubles per month.

The government commission on legislative work did not support the initiative at its meeting on September 11. The draft negative review (available to MK) states that the law “On Enforcement Proceedings” already provides for “a set of measures aimed at forcing the debtor to complete and timely execution” of the decision to collect alimony from him (one of such measures is as you know – a ban on leaving the country with alimony debts in the amount of more than 10 thousand rubles).

In addition, the document says, in 77 regions of the country there are already various measures of social support for families raising children, “including benefits for a child whose parents evade paying child support.” And, finally, bills that require additional expenditures from the federal budget must be accompanied by data on the amount of funds needed and their sources, the government reminds, but no calculations have been presented.

There really are no calculations. From the text of the bill and the explanatory note it follows that the Alimony Fund should be replenished from funds that the state has the right to collect from malicious alimony providers in the amount of child benefits paid to the family for the entire time that the alimony provider was in hiding, plus 10%. And also through subsidies from the federal budget, funds received from private and public funds, voluntary contributions and donations from legal entities and citizens.

“We will try to work with the comments and will submit them to the State Duma,” Ms. Ostanina told MK after reading the government’s response.

It is worth remembering that the idea of ​​​​creating a state Alimony Fund has been discussed in Russia for a long time by public organizations, in the government, and in parliament. It was also mentioned in one of President Putin’s decrees in 2012. One of the ways to ensure regularity of payments for child support is the creation of such a fund in the 2022 report of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Tatyana Moskalkova.