Klishas found no violation of the Constitution in the calculation of alimony Matvey Safonov

Andrey Klishas, the head of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation, said that Russian legislation already allows courts to limit the amount of alimony with an excessively high income of a parent. Speaking on October 8 in the Constitutional Court on the complaint of the goalkeeper of the French PSG and the Russian national team Matvey Safonov, the senator pointed out that the disputed footballer paragraph 1 of article 81 of the Family code should be considered in conjunction with article 83, which allows you to assign payments in a solid amount if their calculation in the share of income “significantly violates the interests of one of the parties”.

According to Klishas, the rule on the recovery of a quarter of earnings per child does not prevent the court from departing from this order. The representative of the Federation Council drew attention to the fact that Article 83 expressly provides for the possibility of determining alimony “in a solid amount of money” or simultaneously in shares and a fixed amount, if equity settlement is impossible, difficult or violates the interests of one of the parties. To prove the existence of such a violation, he added, should the party that considers its interests infringed.

The dispute Safonov about the amount of payments, Klishas believes, should be decided not by the Constitutional Court, but by a court of general jurisdiction. He, according to the senator, will have to establish “how much money the child really needs”, based on the circumstances of his residence, maintenance costs and the level of support to which he is used. If a footballer believes that he is paying an excessive amount, this also needs to be proved in a specific family dispute.

Klishas admitted that the amounts involved in Safonov’s case “really make an impression.” However, the large amount of payments, he said, does not yet indicate the unconstitutionality of the norm. If the application of the current settlement procedure really violates the rights of the player, he should declare this in the court of general jurisdiction.

According to Klishas, the Federation Council sees no reason to doubt the constitutionality of paragraph 1 of Article 81 of the Family Code. According to him, the courts of general jurisdiction have all the necessary legislative capabilities to establish alimony in a solid amount, and the corresponding approaches are enshrined in the decisions of the plenum of the Supreme Court. At the same time, the senator admitted that the Constitutional Court may establish the constitutional and legal meaning of the controversial provisions or indicate to the legislator the need to clarify them.

Safonov’s complaint is connected with the decision of the Nikulinsky District Court of Moscow from January 2024, which obliged the footballer to pay a quarter of his earnings for the maintenance of his daughter Maya, born in 2021. At that time, the courts proceeded from his income in Krasnodar in the amount of 8 million to 12.5 million rubles. per month. Safonov proposed to establish payments in a fixed amount of 300 thousand rubles per month, but the appeal and cassation left the decision unchanged, and the Supreme Court in May 2025 refused to transfer his complaint for consideration.

In the complaint, the football player indicated that from December 2021 to November 2023 he voluntarily transferred about 8.9 million rubles to the maintenance of his daughter, paying first 500 thousand rubles, and then 250 thousand rubles a month. In addition, according to him, he gave the child an apartment worth about 57 million rubles, paid for its repair and improvement, and after the entry into force of the court decision, he simultaneously repaid arrears on alimony for January 2022 - May 2025 for 61.7 million rubles. The total amount of payments, according to Safonov, exceeded 90 million rubles.

The footballer asks to recognize paragraph 1 of article 81 of the Family Code unconstitutional in the part in which it, in his opinion, does not allow, if the payer has a permanent income, to establish alimony in a fixed amount of money commensurate with the real needs of the child. In the complaint, Safonov argues that with high incomes, a fixed share can lead to payments “tens or hundreds of thousands of times” higher than the real needs of the child, and create risk.

The meeting, chaired by the head of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin, was also attended by the presidential representative in the Constitutional Court Dmitry Mezentsev, acting plenipotentiary representative of the government Pavel Stepanov, a representative of the Ministry of Justice and the Commissioner for Children’s Rights. They also pointed to the existence in the current legislation of tools to adjust the amount of alimony paid.

Mezentsev also noted that the legislation already provides mechanisms for balancing the interests of the child and parents in alimony relations. In his view, the courts of general jurisdiction were given a “significant margin of appreciation” to make balanced decisions, but should make greater use of those options. When determining the amount of payments, Mezentsev noted, the interest of a minor child should remain a priority.

The representative of the President believes that it is necessary to exclude “excessive burden” of the payer of alimony, although in itself a significant amount of payments does not mean a significant violation of his interests. If the parent considers the amount “excessive” and believes that it limits his property rights, he can prove it in court.

The footballer did not attend the meeting, his interests were represented by lawyers. As Valery Zorkin said at the beginning of the meeting, about five in the morning, the website of the Constitutional Court received a request from Safonov’s ex-wife Anastasia to participate in the meeting. This, according to Zorkin, was not necessary, since the Constitutional Court does not investigate the circumstances of a particular dispute.

The decision on Safonov’s complaint will be announced by the Constitutional Court later.