Inheritance in Ukraine while you live abroad

An inheritance case in Ukraine is handled by a notary, and a notary needs documents proving kinship, not statements. Until kinship is proved on paper, an heir formally does not exist — however obvious the connection is to the family.

The chain runs from the deceased to you and must not break. A death certificate, birth records at every generation, marriage records wherever a surname changed. A changed surname is what breaks the chain most often: a woman in her own birth record and the same woman in her child's birth record are formally two different people until the marriage record is produced.

Spelling discrepancies are a difficulty of their own. Transliterations differ, dates disagree between documents — after a century of recopying this is ordinary. Such discrepancies are resolved not by arguing with the notary but with an additional archival document or a correction to the civil status record. That is a separate service, and it is better planned for in advance.

The deadline for accepting an inheritance is limited, and it runs from the day the inheritance opens, not from the day you found out about it. The notary handling the case will give you the exact date. If the deadline has already passed, restoring it goes through a court — where the same archival documents are useful again.

What we need from you: the deceased person's details, the dates and places you know, and your own documents. What we do: request the missing records from archives and registry offices, add an apostille where needed, and post the originals with a tracking number. A full three-generation search is priced separately: its scope is not known in advance and depends on what survived.