Disclaimer: the information on this Web page is general. Please, contact us if you would like to have detailed info on legal regulation and specific stages of adoption procedure in Ukraine.

The current adoption law states that NO commercial intermediaries may take part in the process of adoption and that there will be NO fees except those for court filing, notarial and translation and similar services. Parents must travel in person to Ukraine to identify their child and to attend the court hearing. There is no legal procedure for adoption by guardianship or by proxy in Ukraine.

There is one legal adoption agency in Ukraine: the government-operated State Department for Adoption and Protection of the Rights of the Child in Kiev. The SDARC is the only organization which may legally show photos or files of available children and help you identify a child for adoption.

Please, take into consideration that we are offering only TRANSLATION AND GUIDING services to your INDEPENDENT adoption in Ukraine. According to the provision of the Resolution on Adoption issued by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine we act on behalf of couples wishing to adopt as their representatives

LEGAL INFORMATION - You may find here a brief description of all legal matters concerning   adoption in Ukraine.

We will guide you through all of the adoption procedure stages providing as much care as you may need. We are doing only 2-5 cases per month, so you will have 100% of our attention. Ok, here is the adoption procedure in a nutshell:

1. THE CHILDREN AVAILABLE FOR ADOPTION: Children classified healthy are available from about 1,3 - 2 years of age. Some younger children are available classified with serious medical conditions (from about 6-9 months). Two children may be adopted in the same court hearing (in the same court region). but sometimes in second dossier is needed (contact with us for details).  The children should be siblings.

   More boys are available than girls. According to Ukrainian law adopted children should keep Ukrainian citizenship until 18 years of age.  The U.S. has recently passed a law which grants adopted children U.S. citizenship automatically upon adoption.

2. ELIGIBILITY OF PARENTS: There is one main criteria for parents - they should be deemed physically, financially and morally able to raise the child to adulthood. Your dossier presented to the National Adoption Center should clearly indicate that. Single parents and previously divorced may adopt in Ukraine. There is no upper age limit for adopting parents. Parents must be 15 years older than the adopted child. Parents are responsible for registering the child with the Ukrainian Consulate in the country of residence within one month after adoption, and for sending yearly updates to the Ukrainian Consulate.

3. TERMS: Children must be on the National Registry for one year before they are eligible to be adopted. This gives Ukrainian Citizens first rights to adopt them. However, if a child has a health diagnosis as listed by statue they are available for international adoption once there paperwork administratively clears through the AC. I hear this takes about 2 months. Therefore, there are children available under one years old. (Update 4 february 2002) HERE IS THE LIST OF DISEASES which give the right to adopt sick children without a waiting period of being on the list of registration in SDARC.

4. PROCEDURE: Parents must travel to Ukraine personally in order to identify their child and to attend the court hearing. In order to identify a child for adoption, the parents must first have their application and dossier approved by the SDARC. Our families and partners from America, which we have helped before, can help you with the dossier preparation - they will give any info you might need for that.

UKRAINE  ADOPTION  SCHEDULE

Here is a usual schedule for adoption in Ukraine. Please, take into consideration that the time frame varies dependent on many factors. The total adoption process in Ukraine takes approximately 3-4 weeks. Steps toward the goal:

IMPORTANT: in some regions of Ukraine it is impossible to waive 1 month appeal waiting period after the court hearing, so you need to wait this month (and more one week for apostil of documents for a child) in Ukraine or you can go back to your country and in 40 days turn back to Ukraine to take away your adopted child\ren

ADOPTION   LEGAL   INFO

UKRAINIAN LEGISLATION ON ADOPTION

1. Constitution of Ukraine

2. Family Code of Ukraine

3. Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine

4. Resolution on Adoption by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine

5. Law on citizenship of Ukraine

Citizens of foreign countries may adopt only those Ukrainian children that:

1. Are qualified for adoption;

2. Have been registered with the SDARC  for one year without any Ukrainian family coming forward to adopt them or become their guardians;

3. Suffer from a disease (according to the list of diseases issued by the Ministry of Public Health Protection); in this case, one-year waiting requirement may be waived. (Update 4 february 2002)  HERE IS THE LIST OF DISEASES which give the right to adopt sick children without a waiting period of being on the list of registration in the SDARC.

Orphanages are responsible for providing full and complete information on children available for adoption to the SDARC database in a timely fashion (within 1 week). The local office of the Ministry of family and youth youn creates a file for each child available and qualified for adoption and prepares an application that contains basic information about the child and his/her photo. They retain the application at their office for one month, during which they encourage Ukrainian families to adopt the child. After being kept at the district office for one month, the application is forwarded to the regional office of the Ministry of familyand youth. This office has one month to find a Ukrainian adoptive family for the child.

If the child still has not been adopted by Ukrainian citizens, his/her application is further forwarded to the SDARC to be input into its database. Once a child's application reaches the SDARC, the SDARC has twelve months to find a Ukrainian family for the child. If the legal status of the child changes, the guardian authority will have to notify the SDARC of this change within seven days.

Children who, in accordance with list of diseases of the Ministry of Public Health Protection, are determined to be unhealthy are not subject to the 'one-plus-one-plus-twelve month' waiting period and will be available for international adoptions immediately.  

REGISTRATION WITH SDARC

Prospective parents wishing to adopt a child from Ukraine must register with the SDARC to begin adoption proceedings in Ukraine

According to Ukrainian law foreign citizens wishing to adopt Ukrainian children must submit an application to the SDARC, requesting to be registered as prospective adoptive parents and to be permitted to visit orphanages in order to select, meet and establish contact with an orphan. (contact with us for details)

The following documents should be presented along with the petition, this is so called dossier:

DOCUMENTS REQUIRED FOR REGISTRATION WITH THE SDARC

1. Home Study, an affidavit issued by a competent authority in the adoptive parents country, attesting to their eligibility, specifying their housing and living conditions, containing their curriculum vitae, and other information. If this affidavit is issued by a non-governmental entity (a private agency or social worker), a copy of the license authorizing this entity to conduct pre-adoption reviews MUST be attached.

2. Entrance and permanent residence permit for the adopted child, issued by the competent authority in the adoptive parents country.

Comment: For American citizens, the Form I-171H (the INS-BSIC approval form) will serve in place of this document. On this form, INS indicates which Embassy or Consulate will process the immigrant visa for adopted child. Indicate "Kyiv, Ukraine" on the I-171H form. Please contact the American Citizens Services unit for more information.

3. Proof of income (bank statement showing the parents yearly income).

Comment: It is your employer indicating your salary.

For American Embassy in Kiev you may bring either a copy of your most recent tax return, or your last year's W2 statements, or 2-3 recent pay stubs. Any of these will suffice.

Comment: While you don't need your tax forms for your Ukrainian dossier, BUT do bring the last two years tax returns with W-2 forms as you may need to show them at the embassy in Warsaw to prove your income. W-2 form or tax returns and a statement from your employer indicating your salary. To avoid confusion, please do NOT copy blank pages in your tax returns.

4. Bill of health issued in the name of each adoptive parent.

Comment: This should not be just a general statement that you are healthy, but a declaration that you are specifically not suffering from any kind of psychiatric, communicable, internal, skin or venereal diseases as well as a statement that you are not a drug addict, and you are free from AIDS and syphilis.

USE the forms that had loaded  from our website only

NOTE: Put numbers of analyses in lines.

NOTE: Include the copy of doctor license or make forms on doctor letterhead, should be notarized and apostil.

5. Copy of the marriage certificate (if applicants are a married couple).

6. Copy of the passport of prospective adoptive parents.

7. "No criminal record" statement supplied by a competent authority in STATE, for each adoptive parent.

Comment: Statement obtained from STATE police office.

8. Adoptive parents commitment (letter of obligation), an adopted child, to have the child registered with Ukrainian Embassy or Consulate in their home country within one month; to supply information (at least once a year) about an adopted childs living conditions and educational process to the Ukrainian consular office, to arrange for Ukrainian consular officers to keep in touch with the adopted child, and to retain the childs Ukrainian citizenship until 18 years of age.

Comment: It is important to realize that by signing such statement parents assume an obligation to comply with the requirement of Ukrainian law to register an adopted child with the Ukrainian Embassy or Consulate in the U.S. within 30 days after arrival to the U.S. Non-compliance with the registration requirement has been subject of numerous complaints from the Adoption Center and may have a very negative impact on international adoptions in Ukraine. Also, please note that the Adoption Center sends a copy of this document to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine for further transmission to the Ukrainian Embassy or Consulates in the United States to improve their oversight of the registration process.

9. Deed letter

Please note that ALL 9 documents from the list must be independent documents, e.g. one cannot be part of another. 
(contact with us for details about this point)

The documents will remain valid only for 1 (one) year from the date of issuance.

The SDARC must, within 20 days, process the documents submitted by adoptive parents and enter them into the database and put in waiting list for appointment (can take 1-12 months) contact with us for details. The SDARC shows to parents  the files of orphans available for adoption within age range that they want. The SDARC will then issue a letter of referral to allow the prospective parents to visit orphanages and to meet, select and establish contact with the children. Along with a letter of referral, adoptive parents will be given their documents, bound, numbered, sealed, and signed by an official in charge of the SDARC, with a separate sheet specifying the number of pages and the prospective parents' registration file code.

MEETING A CHILD

Once the SDARCr issues permission for prospective parents to visit orphanages, parents may go there and meet with a child(ren), check medical records and establish personal contact with him/her. When a child is selected for adoption, the SDARC then removes the child's name from the database of orphans available for adoption.

COURT HEARING

The packet of documents for the adoption case is presented to the judge after being carefully examined by the SDARC. As a general rule, the judge's decision is announced and issued the day of the hearing. However, it does not take effect for 10 calendar days, within which it can be appealed. Once the decision takes effect, the new parents are granted parental rights and legal responsibility for the child.

It is important to mention that, in compliance with recent changes in and amendments to the Family Code of Ukraine, the power to approve or deny an adoption is solely with an individual judge. The judge's decision, in turn, will be based on a review of various documents of each individual adoption case during the court hearing, where adoptive parents have to be present. The law states that adoptive parents must attend the hearing. The SDARC has stated that this requirement will be strictly enforced following the recent resolution of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. In cases where one of the parents cannot be present at the hearing due to a compelling reason (e.g. major surgery, disability etc.), a judge may permit one parent to provide a power of attorney to the other parent.

OBTAINING A TRAVEL DOCUMENT

RAGS (Ukrainian office of vital records) will issue a post-adoption certificate of birth for an adopted child based on the final court decree and the original (pre-adoption) birth certificate only. Once you obtain the post-adoption birth certificate, you may apply for a travel document (passport) for the child at the local VVIR (office of visas and registrations). You will be required to present the post-adoption certificate of birth and the final court decree.

APOSTIL PROCEDURE

According to Ukrainian law all documents issued in Ukraine that will be used in foreign countries should be appropriately apostils  by the Ministry of Justice. Then they should be officially translated and presented to the Embassy of the parents country of origin. The Embassy officials authenticate new documents of your children.

APPLYING FOR A VISA

Each Embassy has their own regulation for visa application for adopted children. Please, be aware that Parents are responsible for registering the child with the Ukrainian Consulate in the country of residence within one month after adoption, and for sending yearly updates to the Ukrainian Consulate. The child should keep Ukrainian citizenship until 18 years of age, then he/she may refuse to have Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine does not have double citizenship standard.

HERE IS FULL DESCRIPTION OF PROCESS

Information from the Web-site of US Embassy in Ukraine was used during the preparation of this page