Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court has cited two illustrative cases from Shymkent and Karaganda Region in which parents obligated to pay alimony understated their official incomes, prompting courts to convert payments from a share of earnings to a fixed sum, the website infohub.kz reports.
According to the Telegram channel “Current News of the Judicial System,” a resident of Shymkent filed a lawsuit seeking to change the amount of alimony previously ordered from the defendant at one-third of his earnings. She said her ex-husband pays alimony for two children irregularly and in a minimal amount while understating his income. She therefore asked the court to set alimony at a fixed sum of 50 MRP per month.
The first-instance and appellate courts dismissed the claim. The cassation court disagreed with their conclusions, pointing to an improper assessment of the defendant’s financial situation, the movement of funds in his accounts, his assets and hidden income.
Under Article 141 of the Code on Marriage (Matrimony) and Family, awarding alimony in a fixed sum is not limited to cases of irregular income. Any circumstances that substantially violate the interests of one of the parties may serve as grounds. Only a court has the authority to change the method of collecting alimony from a share of earnings to a fixed sum; bailiffs do not have such powers. As a result, the court ordered the defendant to pay the plaintiff alimony in a fixed sum of 20 MRP.
In Karaganda Region, a mother of a child with a disability (Group III) received only 20,000 tenge a month from her ex-husband, an entrepreneur, based on the minimum wage. At the same time, the individual entrepreneur’s official account turnover in recent years ran into tens of millions of tenge, including through successful participation in public procurement.
In her claim, she asked the court to award alimony for the maintenance of her minor son in a fixed sum of 60 MRP per month, as well as additional expenses needed for the child — for treatment, food and participation in competitions. The defendant objected to the claim, citing credit obligations and the need to support elderly parents.
A juvenile court in Karaganda Region converted the alimony to a fixed sum of 25 MRP per month. The appellate instance fully agreed with these conclusions, confirming that collecting alimony as a share of a paltry salary substantially violates the child’s rights. The court rejected the rest of the claim: the plaintiff did not specify the exact amount of additional expenses and did not provide receipts or other evidence of actual costs. The ruling has entered into legal force.