#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. A draft law aimed at protecting the family and children from unreasonable and excessive interference in family relations has been submitted to the State Duma. This was reported on the State Duma’s website.
The draft law contains 20 amendments to the Family Code and 25 amendments to seven other federal laws.
Thus, the document proposes a set of measures to protect children, proportionate to the threats that must be eliminated while maintaining the child’s right to his family. According to the initiative’s authors (the State Duma’s senators and deputies’ group), the removal of a child should be considered ‘as an exceptional measure of his protection and applied only on the basis of a court decision’.
The draft law also proposes recognition of the presumption of good faith in the exercise of parental rights as a principle of family law.
“The draft law introduces into the Family Code new principles of legal family relations’ regulation that protect the family, such as the presumption of parents’ good faith in the exercise of parental rights, the child’s right to his own family. This means that the state assumes the obligation to proceed from these principles when amending family legislation”, explained Elena Mizulina, the head of the subcommittee on civil and family law of the Federation Council committee on constitutional law and state building.
According to her, the presumption of parents’ good faith means that the state recognizes all parents as acting in accordance with the children’s interests until their bad faith is established by a court decision that has entered into force:
“Instead of the current coercive mechanism for taking a child away from his parents by the guardianship authorities in cases of an immediate threat to his life or health (the current article 77 of the Family Code), which is widely interpreted by them in practice, the draft law provides for a set of measures to protect children, which allows both to protect the child from the threat that has arisen and not to destroy the content of the most basic child’s right to his family”, TASS quotes Mizulina.
First of all the complex includes measures that parents can use on their own in cases they know that the child may be left without their protection or care. For example: if parents need hospital treatment or their work is traveling or on a rotational basis and so on.
The explanatory note says that parents could use one of the rights provided by the draft law in these cases. They will be able to apply to the guardianship authority for the child’s guardian’s appointment in the case they cannot temporarily exercise their parental rights for valid reasons. The appointment of a guardian or custodian in this case does not terminate parental rights.
“Unlike the current legislation, the implementation of this right will depend on the parents, not on the guardianship authority. The draft law provides for the procedure for filing an application, making a decision by the guardianship authority, taking into account the opinion of a child who has reached ten years age and resolving disputes over a guardian”, the document notes.
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Text: Ekaterina Elkanova. Photo: istockphoto.com
