When a marriage ends, the most difficult questions rarely concern the flat or the car. They concern the children. Where will they live? How often will the parent who moves out see them? What weight will the child’s own preferences carry? In Belarus, these matters are governed by the Code of the Republic of Belarus on Marriage and Family of 9 July 1999 No. 278-Z, which was updated several times in 2024 and 2025 and continues to apply throughout 2026.
The Code takes a clear position: parents are equal, and the child’s interests come first. This guide explains the resulting rules in practical terms, for parents living in Belarus and for foreign nationals whose family situation involves a Belarusian court.
Under Belarusian family law, you can’t really pull the child matters out of a divorce case and deal with them separately — they travel with it. Article 39 of the Code is clear on this: if a couple is divorcing in court and hasn’t agreed on where the children will live, how the parent living elsewhere will see them, and what child support looks like, the judge has to sort all of that out in the same ruling that ends the marriage.
The relevant provisions sit mainly in Chapter 10 of the Code. Article 74 addresses the place of residence, Article 76 confirms the equal rights and duties of both parents, Article 76¹ governs the Agreement on Children, and Article 77 sets out the position of the parent who lives apart from the child. Article 78 adds contact rights for grandparents, brothers, sisters, and great-grandparents.
Article 74 opens with a simple idea: the child lives where the parents live. Fine, until the parents don’t live together anymore. At that point the rule runs out of road, and the Code gives you two options for what to do next.
The preferred route is agreement between the parents. This can take the form of a notarised Agreement on Children under Article 76¹, or it can be built into a Marriage Contract concluded before or during the marriage. In either case the document must be signed by both parents in writing and notarised. It may set out with whom the child will live, how the other parent will spend time with the child, the amount of child maintenance, arrangements for travel abroad, and other practical matters, provided nothing in the text harms the child’s interests or breaches Belarusian law.
An Agreement on Children is enforceable. If one parent later refuses to honour it, the other can obtain an executive document and bring in the bailiff service without starting the case from scratch. Notarial certification is what gives the document that force, which is why a handshake deal or a WhatsApp exchange is not enough.
If parents can’t work it out between themselves, Article 74 puts the question in front of a judge. The decision doesn’t come down to which parent is the mother, who has the bigger salary, or who happens to work shorter hours. The Code lays out what the judge actually has to look at:
None of these is a knockout factor by itself. A parent with a higher salary who works twelve-hour shifts and delegates the child to grandparents will not automatically win against a parent of modest means who is present in the child’s daily life. Belarusian courts routinely commission reports from the guardianship and trusteeship authority that describe the living conditions of each parent, the child’s schooling, and the emotional bonds within the household. Under Article 86 of the Code, that report is a mandatory element of the case file.
For a child who has reached the age of ten, Article 74 imposes an important rule: the court must take the child’s opinion into account, unless doing so would go against the child’s interests. The opinion is elicited on the court’s request by the guardianship authority at the child’s place of residence, in a setting designed to reduce pressure on the child. This is not a vote, and the judge is not bound to follow the child’s preference, but a well-articulated wish from a ten-year-old carries real weight and is rarely disregarded without strong reasons.
Once the court decides where the child lives, the second half of Article 39 comes into play: the order of contact and participation in the child’s upbringing for the parent who no longer shares the household. Article 77 is unambiguous on the underlying principle. A parent who lives apart from the child has the right to see the child and the duty to take part in raising the child, and the resident parent may not obstruct that contact.
In practice, a court-approved schedule usually addresses:
The schedule is not a favour to the non-resident parent. It is a right anchored in Article 76 and reinforced by Article 77. Where the resident parent frustrates the schedule without cause, the other parent can seek enforcement through the court and, in serious cases, bring a claim to change the child’s place of residence.
The Code also envisages the opposite scenario. Under the second paragraph of Article 77, the court may limit contact between a parent and a child, temporarily or indefinitely, if the parent breaches the agreed schedule or judicial order, or if continuing contact is against the child’s interests.
The 2024 amendments to the Code confirmed the Agreement on Children as the central instrument for regulating post-divorce family arrangements. Article 76¹ allows parents to fix in one notarised document nearly every question that the court would otherwise have to decide: residence, contact, alimony amount and method of payment, and cross-border travel. The Agreement can be modified or terminated by mutual consent, and one parent may ask the court to change or cancel it under the general contract rules of the Civil Code where circumstances shift materially.
Choosing the Agreement route has clear advantages. Proceedings are faster, the child is spared adversarial hearings, and the parents keep control of the details rather than accepting a court template. It is often worth exploring even where the marriage is ending on unfriendly terms, sometimes with the assistance of a mediator, a route the Code expressly encourages in Articles 6, 35¹, and 36.
For families where one parent lives abroad, or where one spouse is a foreign national, the same rules of Chapter 10 apply if the case is heard in Belarus. Two extra factors matter.
First, Belarus is a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction of 1980, and Article 235¹ of the Code implements its return mechanism. A parent who takes a child out of Belarus in breach of custody arrangements risks a return order from a foreign court, and vice versa. This is an area where getting the paperwork right at the divorce stage is far cheaper than fixing it later. For families where one spouse is not a Belarusian citizen, our guide to a divorce with a foreign national explains the additional jurisdictional questions that arise.
Second, cross-border contact schedules need to be workable in practice. A “one weekend a month” arrangement is meaningless if the non-resident parent lives on another continent. Belarusian courts, guided by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, have become more receptive in recent years to hybrid schedules that combine intensive in-person periods (school holidays, summer) with regular video contact.
Article 78 grants siblings, grandparents, and great-grandparents an independent right to keep in touch with the child. If the resident parent refuses to allow that contact, the court can set the time, place, and manner of the meetings, again taking into account the wishes of a child aged ten or over. This is worth remembering when planning post-divorce arrangements, because in Belarusian families grandparents often play a significant role in a child’s daily life.
No. This is one of the biggest myths we hear from clients walking in the door.
Article 76 of the Code puts both parents on equal legal footing. Judges apply it that way in practice. What tips the scale isn’t gender, it’s what the file shows about day-to-day parenting. Who takes the child to the doctor. Who’s home in the evenings. Whose flat has a room set up for the kid. Fathers win residence in Belarus regularly when the evidence backs them up.
Ten. Once a child hits ten, Article 74 requires the court to take their opinion into account — it’s no longer optional. That said, the judge isn’t bound by it. If following what the child wants would actually be bad for them, the court can go the other way.
If the divorce itself goes through the civil registry office under Article 35¹ (no minor children, no property dispute) the residence question does not arise. Where there are minor children, the divorce goes to court, and either the parents present an Agreement on Children that the court accepts, or the court decides these questions itself.
When a divorce is heard in court, Article 36 gives the parties a three-month reconciliation period, extendable by up to six months. The residence and contact questions are usually decided within that overall timetable, so a straightforward case is resolved in around four to six months from filing.
Yes. Either parent can apply to the court for a variation if circumstances have changed, and the court will look at the current situation of the child rather than reopen the original judgment.
Two things tend to catch parents off guard once a custody file lands on a Belarusian judge’s desk.
The first is how little the story matters. Judges don’t weigh the accusations traded across the hearing room — they weigh paperwork. Who signed the attendance sheet at parent meetings. Whose name is on the medical records. What the neighbour says about who picks the child up from school. What the guardianship authority writes in its report after the site visit. That is the case. Everything else is background noise.
The second surprise is how much of the fight can be defused before anyone sets foot in court. Parents who show up with a notarised Agreement on Children already in hand, one that spells out residence, a workable contact calendar, and a clear alimony formula, usually walk out with a divorce granted inside the standard three-month window. Parents who arrive without one are, in effect, handing the details of their family life to a stranger.
Whichever situation you’re in, getting proper advice early is the single choice that shifts outcomes most. The AMBY Legal family team works with Belarusian and foreign parents alike on child residence and contact matters, from drafting the first version of an Agreement to full representation in court.
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