Russian Constitutional Court Finds No Rights Violations in Challenging Spousal Agreements: Commentary by Ekaterina Tumanova for PRObankrotstvo

The Russian Constitutional Court has refused to consider a complaint regarding challenging agreements between spouses in bankruptcy proceedings. KK&P Senior Associate Ekaterina Tumanova provided her opinion on the matter for PRObankrotstvo.ru.

Ekaterina notes that the division of property between former spouses in bankruptcy cases is one of the most sensitive issues:

“Any agreements between spouses are always closely scrutinised by the receiver and creditors, since the transfer of property to a former spouse is often used as a way to shield assets from recovery.”

In her view, the Constitutional Court’s ruling does not introduce anything fundamentally new to the regulation of this legal mechanism. The Court, refusing to hear the complaint, stated that establishing the actual circumstances of a specific case and evaluating evidence fall outside its competence:

“In this case, such an approach is entirely justified given the arguments of the applicant, who pointed to the possibility of a formal application of the contested rules.”

Ekaterina emphasises the fact that, in reality, disputes challenging spousal agreements in bankruptcy proceedings do not lend themselves to a formal approach and, in practice, a formal approach is rarely applied.

Therefore, the Constitutional Court’s position does not change the existing practice but rather highlights the key difficulty in such disputes, i.e., the allocation of the burden of proof:

“A receiver often finds it difficult to obtain complete and reliable information about how the disputed property was acquired, while the debtor’s former spouse, as an individual, may not keep detailed records confirming their good faith.”

Full version of the article (in Russian): https://probankrotstvo.ru/news/ks-ne-nasel-naruseniia-prav-v-osparivanii-soglasenii-byvsix-suprugov-10475