After three months of dating his future Ukrainian wife, Iftah Tsabary, 35, from Israel, warned her that if they got married he would insist that they signed a prenuptial agreement, or prenup.
“I love my wife very much, I truly believe that this will be my last marriage, but I know that money issues can cause lots of problems,” he told the Kyiv Post.
To protect his finances and avoid possible complications, Tsabary and his wife signed a prenup, a written agreement defining the rights and duties of the parties during and after a marriage.
Olga Lepikhina, a lawyer from Asters law firm, says that such agreements have grown in popularity in Ukraine, and many foreigners sign a prenup to protect their assets when they marry a Ukrainian.
But she warns that prenups may help much in Ukraine.
A couple can enter into an agreement that specifies the religion of their unborn child or how many times per week they should have sex. However, unlike the United States, they will likely not be upheld by a Ukrainian court.
If a prenup is concluded before marriage, it comes into force on the day the marriage is registered. If a prenup is signed by married spouses, it comes into force immediately.
“The main idea of a prenup,” Lepikhina says, “is that you leave with what you had before the marriage.”
Legal regulations, terms
There are three main ways to go about signing a prenup in Ukraine.
If a foreigner meets his wife through a marriage agency, they can sign a prenup directly at the agency. However, often such contracts are poorly drafted and have no legal force.
“Once a man came to us asking to explain and translate the prenup he got at the marriage agency,” Lepikhina says. “The funny part is that the man was an American, the agreement was written in English, but he didn’t understand a word of it.”
The second option is to go to a notary. Usually, notaries have pre-drafted agreements in two languages: English and Ukrainian. Such agreements are standardized, and if a client wants to make changes, it will require the services of a lawyer, which is the third option.
Prenuptial agreements help the sides leave the marriage with the assets they had before it. (Courtesy)
A lawyer will take all clients’ preferences into consideration. However, the price of such a service starts from $1,000 and drafting the prenup may take months.
Usually, it is the partner with more money who insists on signing the agreement.
When a foreigner signs up a prenup with a Ukrainian, lawyers make sure it is in line with the laws of the country he or she comes from. A foreigner can then be sure that the prenup, drafted and signed in Ukraine, will be valid in their own country.
For example, in the United States the law allows prenups to stipulate conditions concerning personal relations between spouses, and between spouses and their children, such as the religion of an unborn child, the sexual preferences of the spouses, penalties for infidelity and so on.
“But in Ukraine this part of the prenup will be ineffective,” Lepikhina explains. “Only property rights and liabilities will be taken into consideration.”
Tsabary, a photographer, has been married to his Ukrainian wife for more than a year. He met her in Israel during a photo shoot when she was working as a model. It’s his second marriage.
Tsabary’s first marriage lasted for six months, and he didn’t have a prenup.
“I got lucky, because back then I had nothing, and my first wife had nothing to take away,” he says.
But by the time he met his second wife, he had assets to protect. Their prenup regulates their financial relationship and determines property rights.
“Basically, as long as we don’t have kids, after the divorce she gets nothing,” he says.
Although the couple met in Israel, they signed a prenup in Ukraine and now live in a house near Kyiv. Tsabary goes to Israel for work two weeks per month, and then comes back to Ukraine to his spouse.
“I wasn’t looking for a wife in Ukraine, but when I came to this country, I decided it was not such a bad place to live,” the photographer says.
For Tsabary, the prenup is just a safety measure: He believes his second marriage will last. If he doesn’t though, the prenup will come in handy.
