Belarus Changes Rules For Paying Child Benefits

• 26.12.2024, 12:33

The innovations will come into force on January 1, 2025.

The Council of Ministers has adjusted the rules for assigning state benefits to families raising children. The main innovations will come into effect on January 1, 2025. The resolution on this was published on pravo.by, the office life website noted.

The main innovations will affect maternity benefits. Thus, periods of caring for a child under three years of age will be excluded from the calculation of sick leave. This will happen if the leave to care for him is interrupted due to the liquidation of the employer. According to representatives of the Ministry of Labor, this will increase the amount of maternity benefits, as well as temporary disability benefits for caring for a child.

The rules for calculating the amount of benefits for people working under civil contracts will also change. For example, the amount of the benefit will be calculated based on personalized accounting data from the average daily remuneration reflected before the month in which the right to the benefit arose.

Also, from January 1, in a complete family, if one of the parents is recognized as partially incapacitated or is unable to fulfill his or her parental responsibilities due to illness, the other parent will be able to receive the child benefit without changing the place of payment.

In addition, from the new year, benefit assignment commissions will be able to request more documents to make decisions on the assignment of benefits for caring for a child under three years of age or a disabled child under 18 years of age.

The resolution also specifies the documents by which children born out of wedlock will be taken into account in the mother's family. Thus, they are taken into account there unless otherwise established by an agreement on children, an agreement on the maintenance of minor children, or a court order.

The adjustments also affected the procedure for suspending independent activities for caring for children under three years of age. For example, lawyers will be able to pause their work by decision of the territorial bar association.

At the same time, as for individual entrepreneurs and artisans, as well as people from the agro-ecotourism sector, the procedure for suspending and resuming activities does not change for them.