Family breakdown is a mass phenomenon in Belarus, not a rare one: the National Statistical Committee recorded 34,813 divorces in 2025. When a couple separates — or when parents were never married — one question comes up again and again in our practice: can a parent simply walk away? Can a father “renounce” paternity, or […]
Most IT companies that reach out to us about a contract going wrong get to us at roughly the same point. A milestone has slipped, a payment has been withheld against a defect that may or may not be a defect, and somewhere in the background the question of who actually owns the source code […]
When people marry in Belarus, the law treats most things they build together as joint marital property, split equally on divorce. Gifts and inheritance are the striking exception to that rule. If a spouse receives an apartment from their parents, inherits a summer house from a grandparent, or is handed a car as a birthday […]
A creditor with a Belarusian debtor has, in most cases, three years. Three years from the moment the right was breached — typically the day after the contractual payment deadline — to bring the claim to court. Article 197 of the Civil Code sets the period. Miss it, and the underlying debt doesn’t disappear, but […]
When parents separate or divorce, one of the most emotionally difficult questions is where the children will live. Belarusian family law approaches this question through a specific legal framework designed to place the child’s interests above the wishes of either parent. This article explains how child residence disputes are resolved under the Marriage and Family […]
You have a foreign arbitral award. ICC. LCIA. SCC. ICAC. A BelCCI award seated outside Belarus. The institution doesn’t matter for this — the award is final and ready to go. The Belarusian debtor has assets in Minsk: bank accounts, real estate, accounts receivable, equipment in a warehouse somewhere. You want to bring the award […]
A dispute with a Belarusian counterparty. Your contract gives you a clean route to arbitration — IAC at BelCCI, three to six months, full procedural rigour, court decision enforceable in over 170 countries under the New York Convention. Tempting. And sometimes the wrong move. Some commercial disputes settle better, faster, and cheaper at the mediation […]
Four containers under a multi-year supply contract with a buyer in Minsk. Three paid on time. The fourth landed two months ago and the €180,000 invoice is still sitting open. Replies from the buyer have slowed to weekly, then biweekly. The last call ended with vague references to “quality concerns” that nobody mentioned the day […]
A foreign in-house counsel — could be in Frankfurt, could be in Singapore, doesn’t really matter — is on the phone. The contract they signed with a Belarusian supplier eighteen months ago has gone sideways. The other side has stopped paying, or stopped performing, and now there’s a dispute. The counsel went back to the […]
Most foreign creditors who reach out to us about a Belarusian debtor arrive at the same moment. The judgment is in. The lawyers got paid. The board got the email confirming the win. And then — nothing. Three weeks have passed. Five. Two months. The money that was supposed to land somewhere has decided not […]
Foreign general counsel evaluating a dispute with a Belarusian counterparty arrive at the same fork most cross-border litigators recognize: the contract has — or should have — an international arbitration clause, and the question becomes which institution to choose. The familiar shortlist is ICC in Paris, LCIA in London, and the Arbitration Institute of the […]
A foreign engineering company is finalising a multi-year supply contract with a Belarusian industrial buyer. Procurement is happy. Commercial terms are clean. The in-house lawyer in Vienna, who picked up the file on a Friday afternoon, opens what she thinks will be a forty-five-minute job — run the counterparty against a sanctions list, send the […]
