More than 70 percent of parents in Montenegro do not pay alimony for more than a year, research showed, and one father managed to avoid the obligation to his child for as long as 24 years.
These are the data of the Safe Women's House (SŽK).
Alimony, i.e. the provision of support, is the obligation of one of the spouses after a divorce and the mechanism by which children should be protected from the consequences of the parents' marital breakdown.
Parents are obliged to provide alimony until the child turns 18. In the event that an adult child is in regular education, the parent is obliged to pay child support even after the age of 18, and until the age of 26 at the latest.
Child support is also mandatory for adult children who are not able to work and do not have enough means of subsistence. The average amount of maintenance allowance is 94 euros, and according to the law, the amount of alimony cannot be less than 15 and more than 50 percent of the regular income of the parent providing maintenance.
"It is devastating that so many parents, most often fathers, neglect the basic life needs of their own children. It is a misconception that it is only about people with poor financial status and that this is the reason for not providing maintenance. Richer, more educated fathers are also prone to such carelessness, and such behavior is closely related to the ingrained attitude that the care of children belongs exclusively to mothers and that they are obliged to provide them with all the necessary conditions for life, Ljiljana Raičević from SŽK told "Vijesta" .
It is also devastating for her that the state has been unable to change it for years.
"That is not a priority for the state. Failure to provide child support is a criminal offense and one of the most common forms of economic violence against children and single parents. We are taken aback by the carelessness and inertia of the institutions in these cases," she said.
The obligation of parents to support children is prescribed by the Family and Obligations Act. According to the Family Law, a parent who avoids supporting a child grossly neglects parental duties.
Failure to pay alimony is one of the most serious forms of violence against women and children, according to the Istanbul Convention, to which Montenegro is a signatory.
"It seems that all the burden of collecting alimony is being transferred to the parent with whom the child lives, which is usually the mother. "We did not notice that in their reports they recognize the non-payment of alimony as a form of economic violence against women and children," Raičević said.
He also considers the execution of court decisions problematic. He explains that for a parent who should pay alimony, it is not determined whether he works illegally, changes his place of residence, declares the minimum amount of salary, has additional sources of income, or transfers property to someone else's name...
Maintenance is determined in a monetary amount and is paid every month to the current account of the person entrusted with the child. Raičević states that it has happened that some parents pay child support directly, but adds that in the last few years there have been almost no such rulings: "We also advise women not to receive alimony directly, because that way it cannot be proven how much money she received". she said.
According to the data of the Basic Court in Podgorica, in the last two and a half years, 116 people were judged to have to pay child support. In the past three years, about 80 people who did not want to pay the awarded alimony ended up behind bars.
Šarkić: Not all mothers are flowers
Omer Šarkić from Podgorica is a single father and denies claims that mostly fathers do not pay alimony.
He states that his child has not received child support for four years - from his mother.
"I take care of the upbringing, education and all other needs of the child exclusively, without the participation of the mother. In the beginning, it was not very easy, but now that the child is eight years old, that, at least for me, is no longer a problem. And I know I'm not the only, truly single parent. However, the realization that all these years in the media I only read headlines about irresponsible fathers who do not pay child support, do not take enough care of their children, or completely neglect them hurts me. "I have met several fathers in a situation similar to mine, and many more whose ex-wife blackmails them with their children after the divorce," he told "Vijesta".
He reproaches women's rights organizations because they "make a deafening noise in public about the rights of mothers."
"There is no one to defend the fathers, nor to provide them with legal, psychological and other help," he says.
He adds that the system works "as in everything else - badly or not at all".
"Final verdicts remain mostly a dead letter on paper, processes are slow, prosecutors and judges are uninterested, and public executors are experts in collecting claims of several tens of euros for unpaid telephone bills, burial places".
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