The right to marry outside the usual: clarification from lawyers regarding minors and relatives

The institution of marriage, like any legal construct, in practice rarely looks the way it is described in the textbook. Formally, everything is simple: two adults voluntarily submit a joint application, appear on the specified day at the civil status registry office, sign the documents, and from that moment on they are considered spouses. However, in real life this formula is often violated. Someone applies to the RAC before coming of age, after many years of de facto cohabitation, formalizing relationships by proxy from abroad, and someone wants to sign with a relative.

IA “FAKT” asked the lawyers of the “Repeshko and Partners” bar association to comment on the most common and non-standard situations that arise in the field of matrimonial law. They provided a professional assessment of the circumstances, explained the legal nature of each case and indicated the risks that are important to consider.

Usually, when it comes to the registration of a marriage, a logical chain immediately arises: an adult man and woman submitted applications together in advance to the civil status registration department, arrived at the appointed time in festive clothes, signed and happily went to celebrate. However, sometimes life is quite unpredictable and quite non-standard situations occur, so we will consider the most common of them.

The right to marry minors

The Family Code of Ukraine (SKU) states that persons who have reached marriageable age have the right to marry. The marriageable age for men and women is set at eighteen. There is a single exception to this rule – at the request of a person who has reached the age of sixteen, by a court decision, she may be granted the right to marry, if it is determined that it is in her interests. In this matter, Ukrainian legislation is synchronized with international legislation, because in accordance with the Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948, Article 16 of which states that women and men who have reached the age of majority have the right to marry and found a family without any restrictions based on race, nationality or religion. Therefore, marriage before the age of 18 is possible only from the age of 16 and only by court decision.

It should be noted that an application for granting the right to enter into marriage can be submitted exclusively by a minor (from 16 to 18 years old) who wishes to enter into marriage. If both the bride and groom are under 18 years of age, each of them submits a separate application to the court on their own behalf. At the same time, the application cannot be submitted by a representative of such a person (even a legal representative, that is, parents or persons who replace them). Such a requirement is related to the fact that the application is submitted to the court in the order of a separate proceeding, and at the same time, the parents of the minor must be indicated as interested parties. Even if the parents divorced ten years ago. The only exception is that a parent who has been deprived of parental rights in relation to a child is not considered an interested person.

However, what if the child’s parents divorced a long time ago and the father’s place of residence is not known, or is not known precisely? All the same, in such a case, it is necessary to indicate the father in the application, as the place of residence, indicate his last known place of residence, or the location of his property – part of an apartment, land plot, etc. At the same time, it is necessary to state in the application that the parents are divorced and the father does not take part in raising the child, and to confirm the address of the property, provide the court with an extract from the State Register of Real Property Rights. In addition to the parents, as an interested person, the local community, represented by the children’s service, must also be identified, which will provide the court with its opinion on whether early marriage is in the best interests of the child.

Note that granting the right to marry to a person under the age of 18 falls under the jurisdiction of the court at the applicant’s place of residence.

The grounds for obtaining the right to marry under the age of 18 are pregnancy, the actual creation of a family and the birth of a child. The specified list of reasons is not exhaustive, everyone has their own situation, which must be explained in a statement to the court and justify why this is the reason for giving consent to enter into a marriage.

It is worth knowing that when submitting an application, you must specify:

• surname, first name, patronymic of the applicant, his place of residence, RNOKPP and means of communication;
• surname, first name, patronymic of interested persons, their place of residence, RNOKPP and means of communication, namely, parents, the person with whom the marriage will be concluded,
• indicate the local community in the person of the children’s affairs service on the territory of which the applicant lives;
• request to grant the right to marry;
• information about the person with whom it is planned to marry (where he lives, who he works for, whether he studies, etc.;
• evidence that granting the right to marry is in the interests of the minor applicant.

In addition, the following documents are attached to the application:

1. copies of passports and RNOCPP of the applicant and interested persons (if available)
2. a copy of the applicant’s birth certificate;
3. a copy of the birth certificate of the person with whom it is planned to marry, as she is also a minor;
4. any documents that confirm the grounds for granting the right to marry: a child’s birth certificate, a certificate from a medical institution about pregnancy, etc.;
5. a receipt for the payment of the court fee (for 2025 it is UAH 605.60) or proof of exemption from the payment of the court fee.

However, the main questions that often interest our clients in this situation are: is mandatory parental consent required for marriage? Will it not happen that the father and mother will come to the court and categorically object to the conclusion of the marriage, and the court will immediately understand and support them? No, that’s not how it works! In order to resolve the issue of lowering the marriageable age, it is not necessary to obtain mandatory consent from the parents of minors. Their consent or, conversely, objection to the registration of a marriage by a minor child is not decisive. However, in any case, their position on this issue should be clarified in the court process. The main criterion is the conformity of consent to marriage to the interests of the child.

This is clearly stated in judicial practice. Clause 2 of the resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Ukraine No. 11 of 21.12.2007 “On the practice of the application of legislation by courts when considering cases on the right to marry, divorce, annulment and division of joint property of the spouses” explains that one or both parents (adoptive parents) of a minor child, a guardian, a person with whom marriage registration is expected to be involved in the case, as well as other interested persons. The parents’ (guardians’) objection to the granting of the right to marry is not a reason for refusing to grant the application, since the main criterion for granting the right to marry is the establishment by the court of the fact that such a right corresponds to the interests of the applicant.

We also note that the court grants the right to marry a specific person whose data are clearly specified in the court decision (identification number, date of birth, RNOCPP). This means that having received the right to marry a certain person, it is not possible to register a marriage with another. If the circumstances have changed and the marriage is planned to be concluded with another person, it is necessary to go to the court again with a corresponding application and justification why this particular person should be the spouse, and not another.

It is necessary to take into account the terms of consideration of such an application by the court. The law does not prescribe any special fast terms for consideration of such cases, although everyone understands that they should be considered as soon as possible. In addition, according to the standard procedure, the court decision enters into force within 30 days. Therefore, in some cases, it is necessary to consider whether it makes sense to apply such a statement to the court at all, or whether it is better to wait a few months until reaching adulthood. The last similar case that our lawyers faced lasted two and a half months, and the court decision took effect in another month.

In turn, the granting of a marriage license to a minor by the court does not mean that once there is a court decision, it must be implemented. A minor, in respect of whom the court has made a decision to lower the marriageable age, has the full right not to use the right to marriage granted to him and to refuse its registration at any time before the registration of the marriage. There are no sanctions for this.

Marriage between relatives

Oddly enough, recently such a question began to arise in connection with the mass mobilization of men and the latter’s desire to somehow avoid it. An eighty-year-old grandmother as a wife who needs constant care, an aunt with disabilities of the first group as a bride – was it possible?

Article 26 of the Family Code of Ukraine clearly states that the following cannot be married to each other:

• persons who are relatives of the direct line of kinship (parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, as well as their direct descendants (grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.). That is, those who come from each other on the same line;
• relatives (consanguineous, non-consanguineous) brother and sister. Full siblings are brothers and sisters who have common parents. Unrelated are brothers and sisters who have a common mother or a common father;
• cousins ​​brother and sister, relatives aunt, uncle and nephew, niece;
• the adopter and the child adopted by him.

It should be noted that by a court decision, the right to marriage can be granted between the adoptive parent’s own child and the child adopted by him, as well as between children who were adopted by him. At the same time, the marriage between the adopter and the child adopted by him can be registered only in case of annulment of the adoption.

However, the question arises – does anyone check these family ties and is it possible to catch relatives who want to get married lying? We are not currently considering the moral side of the issue, we are interested in the purely legal aspect. It is clear that when documents are submitted to the RATS department by people with the same last name, employees will immediately request additional documents for verification. Here everything depends on the degree of kinship and the documents that will be provided upon request. Nothing prevents us from saying that we cannot provide additional documents because they have been lost. However, it should be remembered that each department of the RACS is connected to different registers – about births, about marriages, about deaths. Therefore, his employee can check personally any information related to family ties according to the specified registers.

It should also be noted that:

• these registers do not always contain complete information, especially from the beginning of the century, occupied territories, births and marriages during Soviet times in diplomatic missions and consulates behind bars;
• do not contain information about marriages and births on the territory of the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus and other countries of the Soviet Union;
• employees of the RACs do not check every marriage application for the family ties of persons who wish to get married in the registers.

Another source of information is when one of the interested parties finds out about the intention to enter into an unacceptable marriage between relatives and informs the staff of the RAC, preferably with evidence. Even without evidence, employees will have doubts in such a case and will want to check everything carefully.

What will happen to such a marriage, if it was concluded? If no one found out about the family connection, and those who do know continue to remain silent – nothing. If someone does want to raise the issue of the fate of such a marriage, the following rules apply. The ground for the invalidity of a marriage is a violation of the requirements established by Article 26 of the Civil Code. A marriage registered between persons who are relatives in the direct line of kinship, as well as between siblings, is invalid.

At the person’s request, the state registration body shall terminate (invalidate) the validity of the act record of marriage registered with the persons specified above. At the same time, a marriage can be declared invalid by a court decision if it was registered:

1) between the adopter and the child adopted by him in violation of the established requirements part five of Article 26 of this Code;

2) between cousins ​​brother and sister; between aunt, uncle and nephew, niece;

When deciding the case of declaring a marriage invalid, the court takes into account the extent to which the rights and interests of a person have been violated by this marriage, the duration of joint residence of the spouses, the nature of their relationship, as well as other circumstances of significant importance.

A marriage cannot be declared invalid in the case of the wife’s pregnancy or the birth of a child among the persons specified in points 1 and 2 above.

The wife or husband, other persons whose rights have been violated in connection with the registration of this marriage, parents, a guardian, a guardian of a child, a guardian of an incapacitated person, a prosecutor, a body of guardianship and guardianship, have the right to apply to the court for the annulment of a marriage, if the rights and interests of the child require protection. So, the situation is generally as follows – if you want, you can, just be very careful.