The Supreme Court will deal with the procedure for repaying a debt in bankruptcy that arose as a result of the death of a relative of the creditor through the fault of a citizen-debtor
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The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (SC) will determine the sequence of recovery in the bankruptcy of citizens of compensation for moral damage in connection with the death of a loved one and the cost of his burial. The procedure for payments is not prescribed in the law, disputes and discrepancies arise in practice. If moral damage and burial expenses are not included in priority payments, lawyers say, these debts will be repaid along with the requirements of banks and tax authorities. In this case, the chances of receiving money by people who have suffered from the death of loved ones through the fault of a bankrupt will be small.
The Supreme Court will consider the issue of the procedure for repaying a debt in bankruptcy that arose as a result of the death of a creditor’s relative through the fault of a debtor citizen. The dispute about this arose as part of the insolvency proceedings of Maria Skvortsova. She initiated her bankruptcy in August 2021, owing Rosbank 1.3 million rubles. Later, Sberbank and the Federal Tax Service were included in the register of creditors, the total amount of debts reached 1.8 million rubles. The only liquid property of the bankrupt was a land plot in Volgograd, the initial price of which for sale at auction was set at 344 thousand rubles.
As part of the bankruptcy, Galina Kalmykova, as a creditor, filed claims for 1.173 million rubles, including 850 thousand rubles. moral damage, 53.7 thousand rubles. burial expenses and 269 thousand rubles. percent. Arbitration courts have identified these debts in the third place of the registry, along with banks and tax authorities. Ms. Kalmykova did not agree with this and appealed the decisions to the Supreme Court, insisting on the priority right to receive funds.
The point is that Art. 134 of the Bankruptcy Law refers, first of all, to the register of creditors, the claims of citizens to whom the debtor is liable for causing harm to life or health. However, here the person to whom such harm was done died, and by a court verdict, the debtor was found guilty of his death. The circumstances under which this happened are not given in the judicial acts.
The mother of the deceased, Galina Kalmykova, obtained moral damages, burial expenses and interest from Maria Skvortsova, but now she can recover them only as part of bankruptcy. According to Mrs. Kalmykova, her claims also stem from harm to life and health, and therefore must be repaid before others. The dispute was referred to the Economic Board of the Armed Forces, which will consider it on August 14.
The Supreme Court spoke about the status of non-pecuniary damage in connection with the death of a person only in a dispute when it was about such a payment in favor of a bankrupt from another debtor. Then, in July 2021, the Economic Board recognized that the compensation for moral damages awarded to the bankrupt in connection with the death of a relative is not included in the bankruptcy estate and creditors are not entitled to claim it. The Supreme Court has not yet considered cases in which the same compensation is demanded from the bankrupt, the case of Maria Skvortsova is the first dispute in the economic board, where such a question is raised.
The importance of the dispute is that the chance of receiving money from the sale of the bankrupt’s property depends on the queue of the register of creditors, which, according to statistics, on average, is only enough to pay 4-5% of the total amount of debts. “The sequence in bankruptcy is necessary to determine the priority of repayment of debts to creditors, and the higher the queue, the earlier this creditor will receive money from the bankruptcy estate. If the creditors are in the same queue, then the money is distributed between them in proportion to the size of their claims, whoever has more of them will receive the larger amount, ”explains David Kononov, head of the Lemchik, Krupsky and Partners bankruptcy practice.
Thus, the inclusion of the debt to Galina Kalmykova in the third place means that all the money of the bankrupt will be divided between her, the banks and the Federal Tax Service. If Ms. Kalmykova achieves recognition of her debt as a priority, then she will receive priority over the others, who are unlikely to get anything, given the modest bankruptcy estate of this debtor, says Orchards adviser Azat Akhmetov. “In view of the fact that the value of the liquid property of a bankrupt is significantly less than the volume of claims made, the actual satisfaction of the interests of the person affected by the actions of the debtor depends on the conclusions of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Akhmetov believes.
The disputes are caused by the fact that the previous version of the bankruptcy law referred compensation for moral damage to the first stage of the register, but then it was excluded from there, says Nikita Sattarov, a lawyer at Delcredere.
According to Valeria Gerasimenko, Chairman of the Council of the Union of Autonomous Organization SRO “Northern Capital” Valeria Gerasimenko, the sequence of repayment of the claim for compensation for moral damage should depend on the grounds for the occurrence of such a debt, that is, on the circumstances under which this damage was caused. She believes that the moral harm caused by the death of a loved one, of course, should be a priority: “Such an approach would be the most fair, as it would emphasize the value of a person’s life.” At the same time, David Kononov believes that the Supreme Court will attribute moral damage to the third stage, but does not exclude the possibility that the board may “support the side of the mother who lost her son.”
As for burial expenses, the Supreme Court has not yet spoken out on the sequence of repayment of such debts in bankruptcy, but in one of the decisions it attributed them to “compensation for harm to life and health,” Nikita Sattarov clarifies.
According to Azat Akhmetov, reimbursement of burial expenses “should be a priority in view of the fact that the bankrupt was found guilty of the death of this person, and the obligation to reimburse such expenses is assigned to the tortfeasor by Article 1094 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.”
Moreover, according to Mr. Akhmetov, if the funeral expenses are recognized as associated with compensation for moral damage, then they too (as well as moral damage under Article 213.28 of the law) will become the “eternal debts” of the bankrupt. Thus, the lawyer explains, if there are not enough funds to repay them, they will not be written off upon completion of the insolvency procedure and the creditor will be able to collect them indefinitely.
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