Children’s Property Rights During War: What the New Law Changes for Families Living Between Loss, Evacuation, and Uncertainty

Property issues for Ukrainian children during the war are extremely important, because for thousands of families they are associated with lost apartments, inheritance after the dead, unfinished housing, evacuation, disappearance of one of the parents, captivity and a long period of legal uncertainty. In such circumstances, any norm that concerns children’s property goes far beyond notarial practice, as it determines whether the child will have a protected right to housing, land, transport or funds in a situation where the adult world around him or her has long lost stability. Therefore, the law adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on improving the procedure for concluding transactions in the interests of minors and minors is of particular importance for children of war, because it simultaneously strengthens the protection of their property and removes some of the obstacles where the old procedures no longer worked due to the war.

On March 25, the parliament adopted a law that improves the procedure for concluding transactions in the interests of minors and minors. It changes the rules for disposing of children’s property and determines in which cases parental consent, permission from the guardianship and trusteeship body, and additional control by the state are required. The main logic of the document is built on a fairly clear principle: where a child may lose valuable property, the rules become stricter; where a child receives property for free or one of the parents cannot participate in decision-making due to war circumstances, the procedure is simplified.

How the law changes the approach to children’s property

The new rules are based on the fact that parents or guardians manage the property of a minor child without special instructions, but their duty is to act exclusively in the interests of the child and preserve his or her property. This rule is of particular importance in times of war, because for many families, children’s property has become the last material resource that can provide resistance after losing their home, moving or the death of loved ones.

At the same time, the law defines in detail the range of actions that adults cannot perform independently. Transactions with a child’s real estate, land, vehicles, objects of unfinished construction, future real estate and other valuable property are subject to increased control. This includes sale, donation, exchange, division, allocation, transfer as collateral, mortgage, contribution to the authorized capital and other decisions that can affect the volume or fate of children’s property. Such actions require the permission of the guardianship and trusteeship authority, and if one of the parents acts on behalf of the child, the written notarized consent of the other is additionally required.

In such a construction, it is easy to see the state’s desire to block abuses, which can occur more often in wartime than in peacetime. A family, exhausted by evacuation, debts, domestic pressure, and difficult circumstances, sometimes becomes an environment where children’s property is viewed as a resource for immediately solving adult problems. The new law tries to separate the interests of the child from the interests of adults much more strictly than it worked before.

In which cases does the law simplify procedures

Along with stricter control in risky situations, the law also introduces an important simplification. If a child acquires property, including real estate, free of charge, the permission of the guardianship and trusteeship authority is no longer required. These are cases where property passes into the child’s ownership through a gift, inheritance, or other free method of acquisition.

For many families, such a change will have a very practical meaning, since until now, even transactions that were safe for the child often involved additional approvals, dragged on for months, and created a situation where the child could not actually quickly formalize the right to what should have belonged to him without any dispute. In wartime conditions, where families are often forced to quickly sort out inheritance, housing documents, or property rights after losses and displacement, such a simplification can remove one of the most painful bureaucratic obstacles.

In addition, the law more precisely defines the procedure for minors, that is, children aged fourteen to eighteen. When it comes to significant transactions involving valuable property, a minor cannot conclude them at his own discretion without the consent of his parents or guardian and without the permission of the guardianship and trusteeship authority. This approach maintains a protective framework for older adolescents, who already have more civil capacity, but remain vulnerable to pressure, manipulation, and reckless decisions.

During war, this norm has special weight, because adolescents often find themselves in situations where they are psychologically pressured by older relatives, outside adults, or circumstances related to the loss of parental protection. Stricter rules for the alienation of property in such cases act as an additional safeguard.

The most significant innovation of the document concerns families in which one of the parents, due to the war, cannot consent to a transaction regarding the child’s property. The law provides that the other parent may act without such consent if the mother or father is in captivity, has disappeared, has been interned, has been declared missing, his or her place of residence is unknown, or he or she has not participated in the upbringing and maintenance of the child for more than six months.

For children of war, this norm is of extremely important key importance. In many families during the years of full-scale war, situations arose where any property issue was left hanging for an indefinite period simply because one of the parents was physically unavailable, and the old procedure did not take into account the circumstances of captivity, disappearance or long-term loss of contact. Because of this, the child could lose time, the right to proper housing, the opportunity to accept an inheritance or protect their own interest in a property dispute. Now the law allows such cases to be moved forward, without forcing the family to live in a legal dead end.

How the law protects against unilateral decisions in the family

Despite simplification for individual situations, the document does not completely remove the mechanism of mutual control between parents. For simpler cases, a presumption is introduced, according to which one of the parents acts with the consent of the other, but the latter retains the right to challenge the transaction in court if he believes that it was made without proper consent or contrary to the interests of the child.

This approach allows you to maintain a balance between the two needs. On the one hand, family life cannot be turned into an endless chain of notarial approvals even for every everyday decision. On the other hand, in conflict families, where there is an ongoing dispute between the parents or there is a risk of unfair actions, the possibility of judicial protection must remain. For the child, this means that the state is trying to combine efficiency and legal safeguards, without placing the full range of decisions in the hands of one adult without any verification.

What the law changes for children’s accounts and funds

The document also touches on the issue of funds in accounts opened in the name of the child by other persons. Such money can be disposed of only with the consent of the parents and the guardianship and trusteeship body. In peacetime, such a norm might have seemed like a narrow legal detail, but during the war years it takes on a much broader meaning, because children’s accounts are often associated with insurance payments, charitable assistance, compensation, inheritance, or support after the loss of loved ones.

Because of this, control over access to such funds is of particular importance. We are not talking about abstract numbers in the account, but about resources that in some cases determine the conditions in which a child will live after the tragedy, where he will study, and whether he will have at least minimal financial support.

What will change for orphans and children without parental care

Separately, the law strengthens guarantees for orphans and children deprived of parental care. They will have the right to all types of free legal aid, and not just to certain forms of it. For this category of children, such a change seems especially important, because property issues for them are often related to inheritance, housing, documents, litigation and the need to protect their interests in an environment where there is no one to consistently fight for them.

In wartime conditions, the number of children in need of such protection remains large, and the complexity of property cases only increases. Because of this, access to the full range of free legal aid becomes not a secondary social guarantee, but a real tool for preserving children’s rights.