MAFS star Martha Kalifatidis faces court for unpaid parking fines, blames ex-boyfriend

Martha Kalifatidis has faced court over a staggering bill, claiming the fines were unpaid because her ex-boyfriend had “promised to sort it out”.

Married At First Sight star Martha Kalifatidis has been forced to front court after failing to pay 44 parking fines, 10 speeding fines and a $14,000 toll bill.

The 36-year-old reality TV personality has avoided paying some of the fines, racked up in her car on Melbourne streets between 2012 and 2019, for more than a decade.

But she claimed she was not responsible for most of them, blaming the staggering number of unpaid traffic infringements on her ex-boyfriend.

Kalifatidis told magistrate Michelle Mykytowycz in Melbourne’s Online Magistrates Court that her then long-term boyfriend, Arthur Manidis, had promised to sort out the fines but never did.

She said he did not have a car of his own and would demand the keys to her vehicle during their five-year relationship.

When they separated and she moved to Sydney in 2016, she said she gave him the car, but “stupidly” never transferred the registration.

Martha Kalifatidis has claimed she was not responsible for the staggering number of unpaid traffic infringements. Picture: Instagram

“Hindsight is a beautiful thing,” she said.

“He always promised, like, he’s going to pay them … he’s going to go on a payment plan.

“But he spiralled and spiralled and it got worse and worse, and then we eventually just didn’t keep in touch anymore.

“So I didn’t even bother asking him anymore what was happening with the fines.

“Then we were in Covid, so I didn’t hear anything from anyone. We didn’t get letters (from Fines Victoria) or anything like that.”

The make-up artist said she “didn’t think to” nominate him as the driver when the fines landed in her letterbox.

“I wasn’t in a place where I was thinking logically,” she said. “I just really thought he would sort it all out in the end. I didn’t think it would get to this.”

The last she had heard about the car was when her father showed her a news article with a picture of it crashed into a house following a police chase.

But during her candid evidence last month, Kalifatidis conceded some of the fines were her doing.

MAFS stars Martha Kalifatidis and husband Michael Brunelli. Picture: Tony Gough

“I can’t just completely say I didn’t do any of this,” she said.

The parking fines from around her workplace were hers, she said.

She also accepted a speeding fine in a hire car in 2019 and admitted she may have also “taken points for someone else”.

The court heard Kalifatidis’s fines, like many other Victorians, were in abeyance and not being chased during the pandemic until now.

Ultimately, Ms Mykytowycz wiped the fines, and ordered Kalifatidis pay just $2000.

Asked if she could pay it by May 20, she said: “Yes, ma’am, I can pay that.”

Kalifatidis is one of the success stories of the Married At First Sight reality TV series, maintaining a strong relationship with her TV groom Michael Brunelli.

The show was filmed in 2018, with the pair getting engaged in December 2021, moving back to Melbourne in 2022 and welcoming their now two-year-old son Lucius in February 2023.

They live with her parents, Mary and Theo, in their Bundoora home, northeast of Melbourne.

Originally published as MAFS star Martha Kalifatidis faces court for unpaid parking fines, blames ex-boyfriend