Non-payment of military pay upon dismissal

An important issue when a serviceman is dismissed is the issue of payment of all financial support to the serviceman during his service. Since according to clause 242 of the Regulation on military service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine by citizens of Ukraine, "A person discharged from military service on the day of exclusion from the personnel list of a military unit must be fully provided with monetary, food and material support." A military man may demand that he not be excluded from the personnel lists of his unit.

However, in practice, everything does not always turn out as smoothly as one would like. Since there is not an adequate number of normative legal acts that could fully regulate all these issues of payments upon dismissal. Currently, at the legislative level, these issues are regulated only by Chapter XXXII of the Order of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine dated June 7, 2018 № 260 and Clause 2 of Article 15 of the Law of Ukraine "On Social and Legal Protection of Servicemen". The list of guaranteed payments to a serviceman upon discharge includes:

• One-time cash assistance (the so-called OGD);
• Compensation for unreceived tangible property;
• Material assistance for solving material household issues for the year;
• Compensation for unused days of annual basic leave;
• Cash assistance for rehabilitation (rehabilitation);
• Monetary compensation for unused days of additional leave.

However, in practice, it is quite rare that servicemen are paid the entire "package" of monetary compensation at once. Instead, they pay a total amount that is insufficient, incomplete and unreasonable. Also, at the moment, there are no normative legal acts that would regulate the procedure for payment of monetary support to military personnel for the period of delay. Accordingly, the command of military units quite often uses this gap in the legislation and ignores the proper order of payments and payments to servicemen upon dismissal in general.

In such a case, you should seek qualified legal assistance to receive deserved payments from the military unit. Let's look at the real example of our company, which are the mechanisms for solving these problems. The client, a military serviceman, was paid an amount of UAH 5,000 upon dismissal, without any explanations, arguments or confirmations that this was the entire amount of compensation for all points upon dismissal. Accordingly, it was not clear how such an amount was formed and whether severance payments were made for all six items specified in this article above. The lawyers of our company made a legal request directly to the military unit and, in parallel, to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, referring to section XXXII of the Order of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine dated 07.06.2018 № 260 and clause 2 of article 15 of the Law of Ukraine "On Social and Legal Protection of Servicemen" . With a request to clearly provide documents and confirmation that a specific serviceman should receive such an amount for all the stipulated payments upon dismissal. Accordingly, official calculations were received, from which it emerged that the sum provided for the serviceman is much higher than the sum already paid. On this basis, our lawyers submitted another lawyer's request to the military unit with a request to make all due payments to the client, after which he received them.

Therefore, if you need qualified legal assistance in matters of receiving payments, you can contact the lawyers of our company - you will receive competent advice and an understanding of how to act in such a situation.