ABANDONMENT OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE SYSTEM OF LEGAL FACTS: PROBLEMS OF DISCREPANCY BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Authors:   Crimean Branch of the Russian State University of Justice (Simferopol, Russian Federation), Ablyatipova Natalya A. 
Published: May 2021

The problem of improving the norms of family law in terms of protecting the rights and interests of parents and children is long overdue. At first glance, the current Russian family legislation sufficiently regulates the issues of establishing the origin of children, the issues of birth registration and the rules for specifying the child's parents. However, one of the gaps is the voluntary refusal to exercise parental authority. In the legislation, the term "abandonment of a child" does not exist, but in fact, in practice, it is possible to perform this action. The issues of the legal nature of the parents ' rejection of the child, its content and legal conse-quences are not given sufficient attention, while the lack of a theoretical basis not only hin-ders the improvement of legislation, but also leads to a "free" interpretation of the current norms by law enforcement entities. In this regard, this study highlights the right to mother-hood and aims to consider it in the context of the legal possibilities of the mother of the child not to fulfill the obligations provided for by law by refusing them. The article examines the refusal procedure, identifies individual forms of refusal imple-mentation and their legal consequences. Based on the analysis of legislation and judicial practice, it is highlighted that in the course of law enforcement practice, situations are identified that are not covered by the existing norms. The analyzed norms testify to the inappropriate use of the term “abandonment of motherhood”. Refusal to exercise the powers of motherhood, fulfillment of duties, as well as granting consent to adoption are not a manifestation of the right to dispose of parental rights, which are inherently inseparable from the person. The author has established that the actual mechanism of this procedure is expressed in two possible forms: 1) the absence of the fact of the emergence of a legal connection between the mother and the child; 2) deprivation of parental rights in the manner prescribed by law. Based on the analysis of the materials of judicial practice, certain problems of the procedure for abandoning the child by the mother, as well as the consequences of the placement of children, depending on the form of refusal, were identified. It is established that on the one hand, if the mother of the child leaves the child without expressing the intention of further placement, the law establishes the basis for the deprivation of her parental rights after six months. On the other hand, if consent to the adoption is given with the indication of potential adoptive parents, the time period during which such adoption should be implemented and how the legal connection between the mother and the child will be severed is not established procedurally. The author identifies a number of typical problems associated with the refusal of the mother to take the child and exercise parental rights, and therefore offers recommendations aimed at improving the legislation, taking into account the needs of the current law enforce-ment practice.