Hi Karina Duvall,

It is a sad situation. I am US citizen and my wife and I met there. She was born in Moscow and has both Russian and US citizenship.

We got married in June in Moscow while expecting our first child, who was born a few days ago.

The relationship broke down during the pregnancy.

I will need to return to USA very soon for financial reasons and she will be staying here with her parents. She will return to New York with the baby in the new year. She has lived in New York permanently since she was young, but wanted to have the baby here.

I will need to get copies of documents such as the marriage certificate and have them apostilled, but I am not in a position to take care of this myself before I leave Moscow. This will be very important to ensure that my rights as the father of the child are recognized in New York. (In the USA a father is automatically a legal guardian of a child if he is married to the mother when the child is born).

I hope you will be able to help me with this. Any other advice you have for me would be welcome.

Hi Karina Duvall, thanks for the valuable information. I have some feedback and additional questions.

Thankfully, I do have the marriage certificate with myself. If I need to send you the power of attorney and the marriage certificate, will it be OK if I scan and send the documents by email? Or is it necessary to send the documents by postal service.

Once the divorce is done, will the final document issued by the court or by ZAGS? Will the husband and wife needs to sign on the document for it to be valid, or is it a government document which will be valid without the need of my and my spouse signature?

I have a question about the ground of divorce.
Will it be something standard like "On the grounds of the decision of the justice of the peace"? Or will it be something else. The reason I am asking this is to just make sure that the divorce document will be instantly valid without any further process here.

I am impressed to know that you have handled many international divorces. Also, thanks for understanding the economy and currency differences between USA and other countries. Our currency is weak and is very similar to Ruble. The average salary of a software engineer here, in my home country, is 40,000 Rubles per month approximately.

Hence, I suggest you to kindly consider the total service fee to be [the flat fee]. Please let me know what you think about this and also the other points.

I am contacting you to see whether if you could provide legal counsel to a very close friend of mine, living in Moscow. Her name is Oksana, she is a Russian citizen, mother of a 9-year-old child born in Russian, whom she would like to have full custody of. The father, also of Russian nationality and to who she is divorced, is refusing her the custody and actually preventing her from exercising her parental rights. We lived in the United States together as family last year. She took son to Moscow by father request for visitation, but he took the son and refuses to return. Please advise.

So this means that if an American wants to divorce a Russian citizen he can't go and do this at the Russian consulate here? In his own country ? If this service only available to ado Russian citizen then it means I won't be able to do it at any embassy. I need to know 100 percent what I can do. I want to move on with my life.

Dear Ms. Karina Duvall,

I am an American citizen who married a Russian woman in Italy in January 2016. We live in the US and my wife has her green card. I would like to get a divorce in Russia. My wife is currently on vacation in St Petersburg and I am in Italy. We have no children; own a home in New York since May 2018, and a car. My wife has not worked during our marriage and has not contributed financially. I am 70 and she is 55... Our sole source of income is my social security. She owns an apartment in St. Petersburg with no mortgage. The apartment in New York has a $230,000 mortgage with 0 equity, car is paid for. I prefer an administrative divorce because it's faster and cheaper. Can you represent me and handle my case? Do you offer flat fee services?

Here my situation:

-I’m the father, of a Spanish man, resident in Valencia, Spain.
The mother is a Russian, resident in Russia.
We are not married.
We have difficult communication.
The child is 4 years old, he born in Russia, resident in Russia, Saint Petersburg.
I didn't recognize the child yet; he is registered under mother’s name.

My questions:

1) Which law will be applying? Russian, Spanish or international one?

2) Am I able to register the child under my name?
If the mother agrees, i guess, it should be just a normal registration.
Have I the right to give my family name and eventually a second first name to the child?
And what about if the mother would not agree?

On the contrary, if, at the moment, I don't do the legal registration under my name, and the mother wants it, could she make a legal process to oblige me to recognize the child and pay the material care?

3) If we do not agree with the mother about the decision about the child, how does it usually work?
Has the mother all the rights to take any decision?

4) Meeting: Have I the right to see the child alone? How does it usually work for the law? How much time I can see him and for how long?
We are from 2 different countries, so it is not easy come to Russia for me and it is not even my real interest.
Would it be possible make the child come to Spain (for example) with a baby sitter or with any other solution?
if the mother does not agree?

5) Education: have I the right to choose the education, school or any other professional (and not) course? How does usually work?
And again... if the mother does not agree?

6) € Material care: how much is the € / per month I should give to the child? How does this calculation work?
The child live in Russia, so, I would like to know how much is the Russian standard (€/month) that a Russian father usually give to the child in Russia (Saint Petersburg).

7) A which age the child will be able (for law) to come alone and spend time with me or he will be able to decide by himself without the influence of the mother?

Dear Ms Karina Duvall,

Greetings. I found your website via the internet and it seems highly professional. I hope you might be able to shed some light on my situation.

I have Japanese citizenship and my husband has Russian citizenship (with no other citizenship to my knowledge). We married while traveling in the U.S. (where neither of us have citizenship nor permanent residence) in 2013. After everything turned messy, he now resides in his hometown, Samara, in Russia, while I stay in my home in Tokyo. We haven't seen each other since January 2016, only communicated online. We have no child, no shared property, no valuable items purchased together after marriage, no shared debt to my knowledge.

My questions:

1. He does not agree to divorce, so would I be able to file divorce in a Russian court? Would I receive assistance (e.g. translation) in the court, or in the process of divorcing?

2. I hold a job with moderate salary, and he does not have steady income (again, to my knowledge. He says he has some free-lancing works but I don't know the details. He refuses to talk about such topics). In this case, would I be ordered to pay alimony? Based on what I know, his mother in Russia also gives him money sometimes.

3. Due to my job demand and family life situation, I cannot afford a lengthy legal battle in a foreign country. I might be able to stay in Russia for about 1 month maximum, but even that I cannot be sure. So is there a swift way to solve the matter? I try my best to reach a settlement with him, but I should also prepare for court. How long does a typical international case take?

He lives in Samara, so I don't know if it is ok to ask you to take this case and represent me. If yes, how much would you charge? If no, could you recommend a lawyer in that area, or suggest some ways for me to find one? I have done excessive search on the internet but come up with no useful information.

Thank you and best wishes,

Dear Karina Duvall,

Hope you are doing well.
I have been trying to get divorced from my wife for years now and she only last month agreed.
We have not seen each other or talked really except text messages since 2013.

She will not consent to the divorce, and has asked that I send her money and a statement detailing why I want the divorce etc. She also informed me that it will take 3-24 months for the divorce to be finalized.
I have waiting for this for a long time to get married to the love of my life, and if I go this way it will not happen. She will not wait another 24 months.

I do however feel that she is not being straight forward, especially because she doesn't want to get the divorce but has agreed to it.

I would like to get the divorce as soon as possible of course, but will need to know the cost as I am currently working in a startup so am not getting paid loads of money.

Am looking forward to hearing from you.

Dear Karina

I hope I find you well. My name is Alysia, I got your contact details from my friend. She told me that you were given a bit of background about my situation.

I am looking for a lawyer to assist me with my separation from my husband. We are both not Russian citizens so can’t simply go to court. My husband is is Russian American and I am from Ukraine. We were married traditionally in my country 7 years ago and have 2 children.

Because we have failed between us to come up with anything reasonable he has engaged a lawyer thus my need for one as well.

Are you available and if so what are your fees? He has decided that he will no longer give me any money though I am not employed in Russia and have no source of income.

Please let me know how we can proceed. I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards

I have an interesting dilemma and hope you can help!

I was married and divorced in Russia some years ago, but I never picked up my copy of the divorce certificate. I then moved to Dubai, where I live now.

I want to get married again, but need an original copy of the divorce certificate to get a letter of no impediment from the British embassy. Are you able to get this on my behalf?

I would like to confirm that I will receive the original divorce paper, and you will be able to post it to me here in Dubai? And will it be apostilled?

Also, how do we arrange power of attorney?