The rights of the child are one
of the most sensitive topics in every society, and accordingly, Serbian Family
Law has placed special emphasis on the rights of the child and on the care for
the realization of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws. Under
the most important rights of the child provided by the Family Law, we single
out: the child’s right to know who his parents are (right to origin), the
child’s right to live with his parents and the right to be cared for by his
parents before all others. health conditions for its proper and complete
development, the child’s right to education in accordance with his abilities,
desires and preferences, etc. (alimony lawyer)
Article 73 of the Family Law
prescribes the right and duty of parents to support a child. Parents can
exercise their parental rights jointly and by agreement when they lead a joint
life, and only one parent can exercise it independently, of course, depending
on the specific case.
A parent exercises parental
rights when the other parent has died, or is unknown, or is completely deprived
of parental rights or legal capacity, but also on the basis of a court decision
when parents do not live together and have not concluded an agreement on
exercising parental rights.
One of the most common problems
that occurs in practice, and is related to the rights of the child, which again
arise from the obligations of parents, is the issue of child support by a
parent who does not exercise parental rights. Namely, the court will
obligatorily decide on entrusting the joint child to one parent, on the amount
of the alimentation contribution by the other parent and on the manner of
maintaining the child’s personal relations with the other parent. When
determining alimentation, the court takes into account the following facts: the
needs of the alimony creditor (ie in this case the child) and the possibilities
of the alimony debtor (in this case the parent) and taking into account the
minimum amount of alimentation. What is very important is that the law
recognizes that the needs of the alimentation creditor depend on his age, health,
education, property, own income, etc.
In practice, this means that the
law provides for the possibility of changing the amount of alimentation in
accordance with the above criteria, so the fact that the court obliged the
debtor to maintain a single amount does not mean that the amount of
alimentation cannot be changed over time. The alimentation creditor may request
that the amount of alimony will be determined in a fixed monthly amount or as a
percentage of the debtor’s regular monthly cash income. If the court determines
the amount of alimentation in this way, the amount of alimony cannot be lower
than 15% or higher than 50% of the regular monthly income of the debtor. As we
mentioned earlier, the amount of alimentation can be increased or decreased if
the circumstances on the basis of which the original or previous decision was
made change, this procedure in a dispute for alimentation is initiated by a
lawsuit.
Based on our many years of
experience, our law office will provide you with all the necessary legal
assistance in such proceedings.