Brief retelling from RIA II
The Constitutional Court of Russia considered the case on checking the constitutionality of the norm of the Family Code of the Russian Federation on the establishment of alimony based on the complaint of football player Matvey Safonov.
Safonov asks that paragraph 1 of Article 81 of the Family Code be declared inconsistent with the Constitution, since he believes that this provision prevents the establishment of the amount of alimony in a fixed amount, taking into account the real needs of the child.
Plenipotentiary representatives of state authorities in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation expressed the opinion that the contested provision of the Family Code complies with the Constitution.
St. PETERSBURG, October 8 – RIA Novosti. The Constitutional Court (CC) of Russia on Thursday considered the case on checking the constitutionality of the norm of the Family Code of the Russian Federation on the establishment of alimony based on the complaint of football player Matvey Safonov, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports.
According to the materials of the Constitutional Court, Safonov doubted the constitutionality of paragraph 1 of Article 81 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation, according to which child support amounts to a certain share of the income of the payer.
According to the complaint, which is at the disposal of RIA Novosti, by decision of the courts, Safonov, the former goalkeeper of “Krasnodar”, and now of the French “Paris Saint-Germain”, from January 2022 is obliged to pay alimony for the maintenance of a minor child in the amount of a quarter of his earnings or other income.
As the footballer points out, he paid off the alimony debt in a lump sum for almost 3.5 years, paying more than 61 million rubles, and the total amount of alimony transferred for the maintenance of the child already exceeds 90 million rubles.
The athlete asks the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation to recognize the contested provision of the Family Code as inconsistent with the constitution, since, in his assessment, this norm, in the absence of an agreement on the payment of alimony, prevents the establishment of their amount in a fixed monetary amount, taking into account the real needs of the child.
A number of authorized representatives of state authorities in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation during the hearings expressed the opinion that the disputed provision of the Family Code complies with the constitution.
“We believe that the disputed paragraph 1 of Article 81 of the Family Code does not contradict the constitution... At the same time, the legislation sufficiently defines mechanisms to ensure a balance of interests of minor children and their parents within the framework of alimony relations,” said Dmitry Mezentsev, the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.
A similar position was expressed by Andrei Klishas, plenipotentiary representative of the Federation Council to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. In his assessment, the applicant should have justified the feasibility of assigning alimony in a fixed amount in a court of general jurisdiction; there are no legislative obstacles to this.
“I understand that this situation may have led to a violation of the applicant’s rights, but it is unlikely that this was a consequence of the unconstitutionality of the rule that the applicant points to in his complaint,” he noted.
