Respectful appearance: VS named cases when it is possible not to pay fines on time

Long—term treatment, emergency mode and incorrect banking details are valid reasons for non-payment of administrative fines on time. Such a draft resolution was considered at a meeting of the plenum of the Supreme Court of Russia (SC). Problems with non-payment of fines arise regularly, experts noted. In the first half of 2025, their number amounted to almost 1.2 million cases. About what other reasons will be considered valid, see the Izvestia article.

What are the reasons for not paying fines on time?

The Supreme Court explained what reasons are considered valid for non-payment of fines on time. In particular, such circumstances include a person's prolonged stay in a hospital, his presence in an emergency zone, or unreadable payment details. This explanation was given by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, November 18, at a meeting of the plenum chaired by Igor Krasnov. As a result of the discussion, the document was sent for revision.

"The study of practice conducted by the Supreme Court has shown that judges face certain difficulties in their law enforcement activities when considering cases of administrative offenses," Sergei Kuzmichev, chairman of the judicial staff of the Judicial Board for Administrative Cases, said at the meeting.

The Supreme Court suggested that the courts take into account objective obstacles to timely payment of a fine, since they can exclude guilt.

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For example, the objective obstacles in the explanation included long-term treatment of a person in a hospital "in a condition that does not allow them to fulfill the relevant duty," as well as if they are in an emergency zone. In addition, such circumstances included the inability to make a payment due to incorrect indication of the details in the decision, the decision of the arbitration court on the imposition of an administrative fine, or due to unreadable details, provided that the person has taken the necessary measures to clarify them.

The document emphasizes a person's obligation to do everything to pay the fine. In addition, the Supreme Court separately singled out a category of cases of non-payment of a fine for traffic violations, indicating that the incorrect residential address of the driver in the car registration card is not a valid reason to release him from liability.

The number of cases of non-payment of fines increases annually, it was emphasized during the meeting. Thus, in 2023, the courts of general jurisdiction considered over 1.8 million such cases, and in 2024 their number increased to 1.94 million. In the first half of 2025, such cases were reviewed almost 1.2 million times. The amount of fines for the entire period amounted to almost 44 billion rubles.

How clarifications will change practice

The draft resolution codifies the established but disparate practice, making it uniform and predictable, said Vladimir Kuznetsov, Chairman of the All-Russian Trade Union of Mediators. According to him, the problems of proving the innocence of a person in non-payment of a fine arise quite often. This is due to the fact that there is a presumption of guilt in the administrative process.

"A person must independently prove the existence of valid reasons that prevented timely payment," he stressed. — Therefore, this is an important step towards the unification of judicial practice. Courts of general jurisdiction have previously taken such circumstances into account, but these criteria were not applied systematically and depended on the discretion of a particular judge.

The plenum of the Supreme Court actually leads everyone to a single logic: a valid reason is not a desire to "back off", but a real inability to fulfill an obligation, explained Alexey Gavrishev, lawyer, managing partner of AVG Legal.

— The main value of these explanations is not in novelty, but in structure. The courts get clear guidelines on exactly what to check: whether there was an actual opportunity to pay the fine and whether the person took reasonable steps to do so," he said. — For an ordinary citizen, this reduces the risk of falling under administrative responsibility just because the system failed or the person was lying in the hospital without communication. For judges, this is protection from the pipeline approach, when a formal omission of a deadline automatically turns into a new violation.

Until now, the lack of a clear list of valid reasons has led to the courts arbitrarily rejecting the evidence presented. For example, a medical certificate could be considered insufficient if it was not proven that the illness physically prevented the payment.

— The novelty of the project lies in the fact that it systematizes and fixes these criteria at the level of the highest judicial instance, — the lawyer noted. — This creates a mandatory guideline for all lower courts.

So, according to him, pointing out specific examples of valid reasons gives the courts a clear toolkit for evaluating evidence. This will avoid situations where a formal lack of payment leads to punishment, despite objective obstacles. As a result, the quality of judicial acts will increase and the number of cancellations of decisions in higher instances will decrease.

Such an explanation will make decisions more fair and remove the gaps that some administrative authorities used to use, shifting responsibility for their mistakes onto citizens, the lawyers emphasized.