Both the wife and the husband must put together their every effort to create a family with an atmosphere of love and affection for all family members. Unfortunately, misunderstandings and disagreements sometimes happen to families, eventually leading to the actual termination of marital relations. Consequently, the spouses no longer to live together, nor maintain a common household, so that the family actually breaks up.
Notwithstanding the break of relations, the family continues to exist in legal terms and both the husband and the wife as the spouses still bear certain rights and obligations, as defined in the laws for those who got married. For example, if they acquire some property while living separately it will be treated as co-owned jointly.
In addition, after the marital relationship is actually terminated, each of the spouses can meet a loved one whom he or she will wish to marry again. So, there will be an issue sooner or later: what to do with the previous marriage and how.
Ways to dissolve the marriage
Having decided to dissolve the marriage, due account should be taken of many factors, including, in particular, the right choice of the manner to terminate the marital relationship from a legal perspective. As the divorce lawyer from Alva Privacy notes, there are two ways to dissolve a marriage in Ukraine:
- the first one, to apply to a civil registry office for divorce;
- the second one, to file a divorce petition with court.
The first option, which is to apply to a civil registry office, is available to those married couples who have no minor children and have no disputes about the property and who intend to dissolve their marriage with mutual consent.
Otherwise you need to file for a divorce with court. However, it may be often the case that, after filing for a divorce, the divorce process takes too long and you do not know how to manage the situation.
The reasons for which the trial may be protracted
There is a number of key reasons why the divorce process may be delayed in the court.
A divorce petition drafted incorrectly
The procedural laws set out requirements to the petition and the person who files it must comply with them. Having failed to comply with such requirements, the court may dismiss the divorce petition without prejudice.
This is one of the first problems that can be faced before the divorce proceedings are instituted. If the divorce petition is dismissed without prejudice, this means that the trial may take 1 to 2 months longer (depending on the workload of the judge).
To avoid this problem, as evident from the legal practice conducted by Alva Privacy lawyers, a well-reasoned petition, together with annexes thereto, must be correctly drafted and filed with the competent trial court correctly chosen, while making sure that the court fee has been paid in the correct amount.
If you have already experienced an unpleasant situation and the court ruled to dismiss your petition without prejudice, you must promptly remedy the defects found by the court because otherwise you will have to file the petition anew, making the divorce process longer for several months more.
No response to the petition from the defendant
Having instituted proceedings in the case, the court sends its ruling and the petition (statement of claim) to the other spouse. If the defendant in the case receives no letters from the court nor responds to the petition in any way, the court may postpone its judgment for some time, waiting for the defendant to take certain actions.
Thus, as a matter of practice, the divorce process lasted more than half a year in one of the Kyiv district courts precisely because the defendant was giving no response.
If both spouses do with to dissolve their marriage, then the best option would be to send a statement of defense, in which the defendant admits the claims raised by the other spouse and agrees to the divorce – according to the family lawyer from Alva Privacy, such a statement will speed up the divorce process considerably.
As it is usually the case, if both parties agree to the divorce in court and such agreement is documented as part of the relevant process, the court may render its judgment within a month.
Legal advice: how to speed up the divorce process
Here you have some advice from our lawyers that will help you to have a positive impact on the duration of the divorce process:
- Check the post correspondence or your email to receive and timely respond to important letters.
- If your case has been pending for a long time, contact from time to time the assistant judge or the clerk, asking about the status of the case (you may find their phone numbers on the courts' websites). If you do so, your case will not be forgotten and eventually the court will take the relevant procedural actions.
- Thus, as a matter of our practice of law, in one of the Kyiv district courts, the judge did not institute proceedings for long nor scheduled the case for hearing but, in view that ALVA PRIVACY lawyers persistently communicated with the assistant judge, the case was eventually scheduled for hearing for the nearest future.
- Make sure that you provided reliable information about the defendant's place of residence, his or her phone number and email. Moreover, it would be helpful if you inform the defendant on your own about such case being taken to court. If so, the other spouse will expect for correspondence and will be able to respond to the court process in due course.
- In order to draft correctly a divorce petition (statement of claim for dissolution of the marriage) setting out all of the necessary information, we recommend that you seek legal advice from a qualified lawyer. If you contact Alva Privacy, you can find out more detailed information about the divorce process and how much it costs to file for a divorce and, accordingly, get help from a lawyer with such cases.
