When Can a Court Waive Child Support Arrears in Ukraine?

Ukrainian courts are seeing a growing number of cases seeking full or partial relief from child support arrears, with military personnel accounting for a significant share of claimants. The reasons cited for accumulating debt include mobilization, injury and prolonged medical treatment, deterioration of financial circumstances, a new family and children, the need to support incapacitated parents and, in some cases, improper actions by state enforcement officers.

However, none of these circumstances automatically means that a court will waive the accumulated debt. The decisive issue is different: whether there is a causal link between a particular circumstance and the accumulation of arrears during the specific period for which the payer seeks relief.

When the law allows child support arrears to be waived

The general rule is established by Article 180 of the Family Code of Ukraine: parents are required to support their child until the child reaches the age of majority.

At the same time, Part 2 of Article 197 of the Family Code allows a court, upon a claim filed by the child support payer, to fully or partially release that person from the obligation to pay arrears if the debt arose due to a serious illness or another circumstance of material significance. Importantly, this is a discretionary power of the court, not an obligation. The law also does not provide an exhaustive list of circumstances that may be considered material, meaning that each case must be assessed individually.

For military personnel, such circumstances may potentially include injury, prolonged medical treatment, a significant change in financial circumstances following mobilization, or the need to support other children or incapacitated family members. However, merely proving that a person was injured or underwent treatment is not enough. The claimant must demonstrate how these circumstances affected their ability to make child support payments.

Supreme Court: the period when the debt arose matters

The case law of the Supreme Court provides an important benchmark. When considering such disputes, courts must determine when exactly the arrears arose and compare that period with the circumstances relied upon by the payer. This approach can be seen, in particular, in the Supreme Court's judgment of 25 February 2026 in case No. 761/26311/23. Similar conclusions had previously been expressed in cases No. 219/6287/17 and No. 691/1497/18.

For example, if a substantial portion of the debt accumulated before mobilization or before the onset of a serious illness, relying solely on a subsequent deterioration in health does not explain the failure to pay child support during the earlier period. Conversely, if the arrears began accumulating during prolonged treatment following an injury, the payer's income changed at the same time, and they continued to provide at least partial financial support for the child, these circumstances taken together may be material to the court's assessment.

For this reason, in some cases it may be more legally justified to seek partial relief from arrears for a specific period rather than the complete cancellation of the entire accumulated debt.

What military personnel need to prove

The most important step in such cases is to establish a clear timeline of how the debt arose. A month-by-month calculation of the arrears should be compared with the dates of mobilization, injury, hospitalization and treatment, changes in military pay, the birth of another child, the need to support incapacitated parents and the payments actually made.

For example, the birth of a child in a new family does not terminate the obligation to support children from a previous relationship. Likewise, mobilization does not automatically constitute grounds for cancelling child support arrears.

What may matter is the totality of the evidence: medical records, information about income and military pay, bank statements, treatment records, evidence of financial support provided to other family members and proof of payments actually made for the benefit of the children.

When the problem results from enforcement actions

Relief from child support arrears should also be distinguished from a dispute concerning whether the arrears were calculated correctly in the first place.

If a state enforcement officer incorrectly calculated the debt, failed to take payments into account or made other errors, the first step should be to establish the actual amount owed. In such circumstances, the appropriate remedy may be to challenge the calculation or the relevant enforcement decisions rather than seek relief from a debt that may have been incorrectly determined.

If the calculation itself is correct but the arrears arose because of a serious illness or other material circumstances, the issue of applying Part 2 of Article 197 of the Family Code of Ukraine then becomes relevant.

What recent court practice shows

In 2026, disputes of this kind have already been considered, among others, by the Lviv Court of Appeal in case No. 463/10252/24, the Kyiv Court of Appeal in case No. 359/861/25 and the Khmelnytskyi Court of Appeal in case No. 688/6043/25.

There is no universal rule that “a servicemember can have child support arrears written off.” What matters to the court is not the claimant's military status as such, but the specific reasons for non-payment, the period during which the debt arose, the payer's financial and family circumstances, health condition and conduct in fulfilling parental obligations.

For this reason, preparing such a claim should begin not with a general description of difficult life circumstances, but with an analysis of the month-by-month calculation of the debt and evidence explaining why it arose. If a direct link can be established between a material circumstance and a specific portion of the arrears, Article 197 of the Family Code of Ukraine allows the claimant to seek either full or partial relief from payment.