Russia: Supreme Court rules foster parents entitled to certain payments
Foster parents will be able to receive interest on delayed payments, says the Russian Supreme Court
15.10.2024
Article published on the ASI website
The Russian Supreme Court has ruled that payments to foster parents under the Federation’s Family Code have no intended purpose and therefore come under civil law. A family can therefore receive the interest accrued as a result of delays in the non-payment of funds.
A Muscovite woman, Natalya Isakova, became a guardian of under-aged children with her husband in 2015. The following year, the couple contacted the Moscow guardianship authorities to apply for a foster care agreement with them. Such an arrangement is necessary for the formal confirmation of their guardian status and for payments to be assigned. However, their request was denied.
The Isakovs appealed against the decision and demanded that the guardianship agencies grant their request. In this instance, payments due to the family were to start at the time of the first application, i.e. from May 2016. The agreement was signed in August 2019, but for the last three years, the authorities have not transferred any funds to the family.
Natalya again appealed to the courts but they were only able to partially satisfy her demands. The guardianship agencies were ordered to make payments covering the period from 2016-2019 but refused to add the interest that had accrued during that time. Isakova then filed a complaint with the Federation’s Supreme Court.
The Court considered the family’s petition and concluded that the foster parents had the right to the interest accrued during the delay to or non-payment of their monthly allowance under the foster family agreement.
The Supreme Court noted that Russian courts often regard agreed payments to adoptive parents as a civil law matter, which excludes the use of civil law mechanisms for the recovery of payments. However, under the Federation’s Family Code, remuneration given to the parents is just one of the payments made to a foster family and has no intended purpose, i.e. the family has the right to spend allowances as it sees fit. Consequently, these payments are regarded as a civil legal issue.
The Court ruling states: “The inter-relationship between clause one of Article 395 of the Russian Federation’s Civil Code, clause two of Article 152 and clause two of Article 153.1 of the Federation’s Family Code is not inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution in so far as <…> and cannot act as grounds for refusing to satisfy the claim of a foster parent to recover the interest on the late payment by guardianship and custody authorities of monthly allowances for meeting their obligations under the foster family agreement”.
