Support payments abroad for oneself or for one’s children are rights of women, provided for by law. They are valid even when the debtor is abroad.
“Good news, not only for women and children, but for all citizens, is that their rights do not end at the country’s borders. It is possible to request legal cooperation from another foreign State in cases of support payments”, said, in 2018, Luiz Roberto Ungaretti, director of the Department of Asset Recovery and International Legal Cooperation (DRCI) of the Ministry of Justice.
Read also
Monetary adjustment of support payments between former spouses must be in the agreement
“It is important to make known that payment of support may also be requested when the parent lives in another country or is a foreigner. Today, several international treaties allow one to request and obtain the payment of support abroad”, Ungaretti explained.
The section on the Ministry of Justice’s page – www.justica.gov.br/alimentos – is dedicated to requests for support payments at the international level. There, available for example, is information on tools to obtain support payments to be paid in Brazil when one of the persons involved is abroad.
Also available is information on how to receive support payments abroad when one of the persons involved is in Brazil.
Other possibilities, such as increasing, reducing, or waiving the payment of support, are also provided for in the international agreements gathered in this section.
The international agreements made available may also be used when it is necessary to obtain evidence in the cases of support payments mentioned above, as well as when the request relates to assets or income located in a country different from the one in which the request is made, or further when it is necessary to communicate procedural acts abroad (summons, subpoena, or notification).
“Before making the request for support, it is necessary to define on which international agreement the request for international legal cooperation will be based. And it is precisely there that doubts arise”, Ungaretti stressed.
For this, the destination country must be taken into account, the stage of any ongoing lawsuit, whether there is already a prior judicial decision on the support, and what the strategy is of the person to whom the request refers (interested party), generally defined with the support of their lawyer or public defender.
Source: Ministry of Justice and Public Security
← Back to blog