Many need legal advice for marriage, divorce, adoption and surrogate mothering.
Ukraine’s leading law firms get paid top dollar for helping domestic and foreign companies swim safely in the nation’s muddy business waters.
But where can an average foreigner, be it an expat residing in Ukraine long term or just passing through, turn to for help when they get out of a jam or just need basic legal advice at an affordable price?
With business activity levels still depressed as the economy slowly crawls out of the 2009 recession, top lawyers that were years ago charging several hundred dollars per hour to the biggest of clients will now take just about any kind of work.
But expats may be able to find better price and quality service with a handful of law firms that specialize in servicing individual foreigners at more reasonable prices.
A few of the law firms in Kyiv that tailor to such demand include the Family Law group, Vronskiy, Vronskaya & Partners and AGA & Partners.
At prices between 100-250 euros per hour, they advise foreigners on how to how to adopt babies in Ukraine, buy apartments and get necessary residency permissions, marry locals and get divorced while protecting assets should relationships go wrong.
While there are thousands of individual lawyers and smaller practices scattered throughout the country that can charge much less, they often don’t have sufficient English language skills, or a sound understanding of international law and related nuances that could arise.
It is “most common for foreigners to seek legal advice in questions of marriage and divorce,” said Anna Leluck from Family Law Group.
Anna Vronskaya, managing
partner at Vronskiy, Vronskaya & Partners
Established in 2005, the law firm claims to exclusively specialize in family law as well as in servicing foreigners.
“Usually it is men marrying Ukrainian women – we advise them and the Ukrainian girls,” added Anna Vronskaya, managing partner at Vronskiy, Vronskaya & Partners.
Family Law Group said a basic service involves preparing bureaucratic paperwork for a basic marriage between a foreigner and Ukrainian.
Investing the relatively small sums for proper legal advice upon marriage can help avoid more costly and painful headaches that can follow should the relationship collapse, added Vronskaya.
“With property abroad, the collapse of a marriage can be extra painful for the foreigner,” she said adding that the average hourly rate for legal advice by her firm runs some 100 euros.
“We help to formulate a prenuptial agreement – a contract agreement concerning wealth division in case of divorce while also tackling questions concerning children,” Vronskaya said.
Aminat Suleymanova from AGA & Partners said that her firm is handling an increasingly number of adoptions and surrogate mother cases, where foreigners hire local Ukrainian women to give birth to their children.
“We can document the process and send the necessary paper work to the country of return to show that the procedure was legal,” Suleymanova said.
Business is picking up, the lawyers said.
The amount of clients for such services since 2001 has increased by about 40 percent, to more than 60 annually, Suleymanova said.
“More and more foreigners are building families in Ukraine. Also many of the couples that got married in the 1990s are now starting to get divorced,” Suleymanova said.
Aminat Suleymanova
“Couples also tend to acquire more property than singles, so there is more to argue about after a divorce,” Vronskaya added.
Kyiv Post staff writer Rina Soloveitchik can be reached at [email protected].
