Every day the number of couples living together without official registration of marriage is significantly increasing. The so-called “civil marriage” is absolutely the same as a registered marriage, which was registered in the manner prescribed by law. Many men and women now live together in the same family for more than one year, while buying houses and appliances, taking loans, have children in common, but are in no hurry to legalize their relationship. But in vain! After all, if you need to acquire or enter into the rights to jointly acquired property, alimony or inheritance, you will have to defend your interests in court by establishing the fact of living with one family.
This procedure is not simple, but if you correctly draw up a statement of claim, collect all the evidence and submit it to the court, then you will have all the rights of a legal spouse.
To do this, you will need to provide the court with evidence of cohabitation, namely: that you had a common life and marital relations, supported each other financially, perhaps even have children, etc.
Such evidence can be: a certificate of residence, a birth certificate of a child, personal letters, photographs of where you spend time together or travel on vacation, buying gifts for each other on holidays, testimonies of friends, parents or neighbors, third-party certificates, bank statements bills and other documents and evidence that will help the court determine that you lived together as a family.
In some cases, you may need to establish the fact of living with one family:
When dividing property that was acquired during the joint residence by the actual spouses.
The law protects the rights of everyone, therefore all property that you bought while living together is divided in half, unless an appropriate written agreement has been drawn up between you regulating these relations.
How long you lived together does not matter, it only takes into account the fact that you were one family and had a marital relationship.
This means that the rights in a “civil marriage” are equated with the rights of a legal marriage. On this basis, you have the right to half the property that you acquired while you lived together. Moreover, this rule applies to spouses equally, regardless of who worked, and who studied disciplines at a university or just watched the household.
As a rule, these standards protect to a greater extent women who are forced to not work at birth and cannot have their own income due to circumstances.
But there is an important point that is considered by the court: spouses should not be in another marriage. What does it mean? And this means that very often it happens that a man and a woman begin a new relationship, but at the same time they are in no hurry to divorce their former spouses. In such cases, it turns out that you have and are responsible to the former spouse, and not to the new one. And this applies not only to joint property, but also to child support in case of loss of working ability of one of you.
If a person has a right to upkeep.
Couples who lived together and shared a household, as well as shared responsibilities to each other, have the same rights as those who came to the registry office and registered their marriage. Both of them have the full right to receive alimony in case one of them has become incapable of work and needs maintenance.
For inheritance.
Spouses are also entitled to inheritance. But the Civil Code of Ukraine establishes a mandatory rule: cohabitation must be at least 5 years. In this case, the court will have to prove not only that you lived as a family, but also how much time you lived together.
When registering the right to retirement in connection with the loss of the breadwinner.
The law also provides for your right to retirement if you have lost the person who was the breadwinner in your family. This means that all disabled family members of the deceased who were dependent on him have the right to retirement. This applies to children, spouses and parents.
Moreover, children are assigned a pension in any case and regardless of whether they were dependent on him or not.
Parents and the other half of the deceased, who were not on his support, are still entitled to retirement if they have lost the breadwinner, or you have lost the source of your existence.
In this case, you must clearly understand that first you will need to legalize a civil marriage in court by establishing the fact of living with one family, and then you will be able to share the acquired property, enter into the inheritance of the deceased, etc.
Of course, it is impossible for a simple citizen to know all the Laws of Ukraine, and even more so to understand the intricacies and nuances of the procedural order. But this is not necessary. It is enough to understand your rights and obligations, and the rest will be done by lawyers and lawyers for you.
