Until now, a parent who failed to pay child support risked, at worst, a fine. A small one: between 250 and 1,000 lei, under article 63 of the Contravention Code. From now on, they risk landing behind bars for 10–15 days, doing unpaid community work and — a provision with immediate effect — being stopped right at the border, banned from leaving the country.
This is the package of amendments adopted by Parliament on 18 June, on the initiative of a group of MPs. The law touches three codes — the Family Code, the Contravention Code and the Enforcement Code — and is meant, its authors say, to align Moldova with international child-protection standards. It passed first reading back on 2 April; promulgation and publication in Monitorul Oficial, from which it enters into force, now follow.
What it provides, exactly
The core change is that non-payment is no longer a mere contravention punished with a fine. The evading parent risks contravention arrest of 10 to 15 days or 45–60 hours of unpaid community work. Three new levers are added on top:
- A ban on leaving the country, applied immediately the moment the debtor tries to cross the border.
- Suspension of the driving licence, as well as the hunting or fishing permit, when the arrears reach at least three months. The measure is not automatic: it is ordered by a court, on the bailiff’s reasoned request, with proportionality safeguards — including an exception where the licence is indispensable for earning a living.
- Children become direct beneficiaries of the support, closing the old argument that the money is spent by the other parent for other purposes.
The law also regulates relations between separated parents: the child has the right to keep in touch with both parents, as well as grandparents and siblings, and if the parents cannot agree on a visitation schedule, it is set by the court.
The figures that explain how it came to this
Beyond the harshness of the penalties, the problem the law targets is real and old. According to a thematic report by the Ombudsman for children’s rights, produced in 2024 with UNICEF support, child support is collected regularly in only 4.7% of cases under enforcement. The rest — a vast majority — means late, partial or non-existent payments.
The structure of the arrears is even more telling: in 39.5% of cases the debt exceeds 18–24 months, and bailiffs have reported cases where arrears stretch over 10 years (17.9%), 16 and even 18 years (10.3% each). At the end of 2023, bailiffs were handling about 28,000 child-support enforcement files, and the law’s authors estimate that around 30,000 children in the country do not receive this money regularly. In four out of five cases, the amount collected is below a child’s minimum subsistence level.
To grasp the scale, the report offers a comparison: on the same date, the Czech Republic — a country almost five times more populous — had fewer than 5,000 such files, against Moldova’s 28,000.
In Ungheni, the border is no abstraction
This is where the local angle comes in. The most visible of the new levers — stopping the debtor at the border — is, for a border district, far more than a sentence in a law. Sculeni, in the Ungheni district, runs one of the busiest road border crossings with Romania on the Prut. Thousands of people pass through it every day; among them, inevitably, parents in arrears who, from now on, risk being turned back.
How large is the pool of families concerned? The Ungheni district recorded 341 divorces in 2024 and 428 in 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Set against the 466 marriages registered in 2024, that is almost three divorces for every four weddings. Each separation involving minor children creates a maintenance obligation — and a potential enforcement file, if the money does not come.
There is also a side the law reaches less easily. The number of district children registered by the guardianship authority because both or the only parent are abroad has risen sharply — to 796 in 2024, according to the report of the Ungheni Territorial Social Assistance Structure (a figure to read with caution, as it also reflects a reorganisation of the records). Nationally, of the 33,830 children separated from their parents at the end of 2023, 87% were in that situation because their parents had left to work abroad.
How many of these situations turn into an enforcement file in the Ungheni district itself is not published centrally: the figure sits with the city’s bailiff offices, the only place where the problem’s true scale can be read at district level.
The other side: necessary, but enough?
Not all voices are convinced that toughening the punishment solves the problem. A lawyer quoted by Chișinău media, Gașițoi, warned that “penalties there must be, undeniably, but the way the law was voted it will be total chaos,” pointing to problems of proportionality and procedure.
Two limits also emerge from the data. First: a parent jailed for 15 days earns no income during that time from which to pay — which is why the Ombudsman’s report insists more on enforcement mechanisms (detecting undeclared income, “envelope” wages) than on punishment. Second, felt especially locally: if 87% of separated children have parents abroad, then arrest, community work and licence suspension — all measures that work on the country’s territory — have limited effect on those who do not return. For a border district like Ungheni, the ban enforced at Sculeni remains, paradoxically, one of the few levers with real grip on a departed parent — as long as he still comes home.