Child support for minor children: issues in judicial practice

this article analyzes the challenges of judicial practice in cases involving the collection of child support payments for minors in the contemporary Russian legal system. The research's novelty lies in its comparison of doctrinal approaches to determining the amount of child support (in shares and as a fixed monetary amount), calculating arrears, and enforcing court decisions with current judicial practice from 2022 to 2025, including the positions of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and cassation courts of general jurisdiction. It is shown that, despite the formal adequacy of regulatory frameworks, significant differences persist in court approaches to determining minimum alimony payments, taking into account informal and one-time income of debtors, and classifying and collecting debts. Specific cases illustrate typical errors: exceeding the statutory total amount of alimony payments when successive claims are filed for different children, unjustified inclusion of one-time income from the sale of property in the calculation of arrears, and a formal approach to assessing changes in the financial and family situation of the payer. Particular attention is given to the impact of recent measures to strengthen enforcement proceedings (the creation of a public registry of alimony debtors, the increase in the total amount of alimony collected) on the actual protection of children's interests. Based on the research results, a specific proposal for improving family legislation is formulated: to enshrine in the Family Code of the Russian Federation a minimum guaranteed amount of alimony, expressed as a percentage of the regional subsistence minimum for a child, with limited exceptions according to strictly defined criteria.

marriage, spouses, rights and obligations, marriage contract, comparative law, Russian law, Islamic law