Drafting marriage agreements and alimony agreements

The Law Firm “First Legal” has been successfully operating on the market of legal and consulting services for more than 11 years. Our company is focused on providing quality services to its clients and highest possible consideration of their interests in the case of issues related to the conclusion (drafting) of a marriage agreements or alimony agreement.

At present, the conclusion of marriage agreements has not gained much application in Ukraine, as well as alimony agreements, although the latter are much more common. Perhaps the non-conclusion of marriage agreements is due to certain old traditions of building family relationships based on mutual trust and unwillingness to “spoil” the relationship with unnecessary formalism.

However, the reality is that the first thoughts about the need to settle personal property relations between spouses arise when problems in the personal relations of husband and wife appear, which in itself precludes the possibility of concluding a marriage agreement. Therefore, the expediency of concluding a marriage agreement should be considered either before the date of marriage state registration or after its registration during married life (as provided by current legislation of Ukraine), but at the stage of mutual understanding and absence of any contradictions between spouses. 

The main purpose of concluding a marriage agreement is rather to regulate marital relations in terms of the property ownership acquired during marriage in case of divorce than to determine personal non-property relations between spouses (participation of each spouse in bringing up children, using property, etc.). The conclusion of a marriage agreement is a right and not an obligation of the spouses by all means, however, in our opinion, its conclusion is desirable because it will allow the spouses (in case of divorce) to avoid lengthy litigation over the division of the marital property in the future and will help maintain a friendly relationship after a divorce. 

The most important feature of the marriage agreement is that it allows regulating property relations (property rights and obligations of the spouses) in a different way than it provided by the general principles of family law. In particular, the marriage agreement may stipulate the following:

• the property that is acquired by the marriage couple during their marriage will be their personal private property (non-extension of the presumption of the right of joint property ownership acquired by the spouses during their marriage);
• the size of the shares in the property right, which will be acquired during marriage, can be defined at the discretion of the spouses;
• conditions for the joint property division may be provided in the event of divorce;
• the procedure for debts repayment of each spouse at the expense of the joint property or the property belonging to them under the right of personal private property, and many other features provided to the parties of the marriage agreement, in case of its conclusion.

With regard to the conclusion of the alimony agreement, it should be noted that such agreements are concluded between the child’s parents if the parents have mutual consent and desire to settle the issue of child support and additional costs for the child other than guaranteed by the state (as the part of the income of either of parents or in a fixed sum of money, which cannot be lower than the amount of child support guaranteed by the state, i.e. at least 50 per cent of the subsistence minimum for a child of the relevant age). To sum up, if you would like to draft (to prepare) a marriage agreement or the alimony agreement, please feel free to contact the Law Firm “First Legal” and its professionals will be happy to provide you with qualified assistance.