A woman was removed from the IDP registry but continued to receive payments. Did the court order her to return the funds?

The woman was registered as an internally displaced person. Later, she was removed from the register at her own request, but she continued to receive payments. The citizen is being asked to return funds amounting to 8,000 hryvnias. This is stated in the decision of the Lenin District Court of Zaporizhzhia, published on January 30, 2025.

On April 9, 2022, the woman applied to the Department of Social Protection of the Zaporizhzhia City Council in the Dnipro District for registration as an internally displaced person. In February 2023, specialists from the department found that she had been removed from the register in the Unified Information Database of Internally Displaced Persons at her own request on October 18, 2022. However, she did not inform the Department and continued to receive payments until the fact of her removal from the register was identified (November 2022, February 2023), totaling 8,000 hryvnias.

What did the court decide?

The court granted the claim. The woman is required to repay the amount of 8,000 hryvnias to the Department of Social Protection of the Zaporizhzhia City Council.

"Thus, as a general rule, unreasonably acquired monthly assistance by a person is not subject to return; instead, the law establishes two exceptions to this rule: firstly, if the payment is the result of a calculation error on the part of the entity making this payment; secondly, in the case of bad faith on the part of the recipient. The return of overpaid monthly assistance amounts is provided for in cases where such overpayment occurred due to the fault of the person receiving such assistance, namely, due to abuses, particularly in cases of providing false information or failing to provide the relevant information altogether," the court emphasized.