Most of the foreign men who seek marriage with Russian women, are single or officially divorced, and so are the women who they correspond with. Each party wants to make sure that the page of their old life has been turned over and there will be no interference of the past life into their new, developing relationship.

At the same time, I am frequently contacted by men who tell me that - all of a sudden - they find out that their women have problems taking their kids (of under 18y.o.) with them when they decide to move in together in his country. According to Ukrainian law, a divorced mother cannot obtain a visa to take her child abroad without having a written permission of the child's father confirming his consent to this trip.

The former fathers, in their turn, may not be available at all - contact with him may have been lost years ago, or he may have left for another city (country), or there may be some other reasons for not being able to obtain the necessary paper.

This unhappy situation seems to happen to many divorced women, especially if the previous marriage ended a long time ago, and when the divorce left both parties unhappy with each other. The woman obtains her divorce certificate and is happy to end up with the whole story. As a rule, she is so tired of it that she does not even think about a new marriage. With time, the negative emotions calm down, but the former spouses have no interest in communicating at all. In Ukraine, divorced women are committed to growing their kids by themselves; they tend to limit (or totally terminate) any contacts between their former huusbands and kids, and through years, all the connections between the former family members are lost.

When the woman enters a new relationship that seems prespective to her, she is very fearful of loosing it, so she tries not to allow any disturbing or distructive circumstances. For example, one woman told shard with me that she was most of all scared of her former mother-in-law, who happened to work in the same company as herself and could find out about her new relationships. As the lady was upset about her son's unhappy personal life, she might grow very particular about destroying her former daughter-in-law's life, and even the thought of the grand children would not stop her. Thus, the poor woman had no idea how she could even approach her former family with the talk about obtaining a permission to take her kids abroad and marry another man.

Another woman told me a terrible story of her former husband being an alcoholic who abandoned her and their daughter, after years of miserable life full of rows, fights and misery. She has no idea where he is now as he kept destroying himself with drinking for years, and she was happy to escape living with him. She could not find him to get the required paper, so she had to wait two years till her daughter turned 18 to be able to apply for her visa. 

When a new chance to start a family comes up, the woman who'd had such a story before, is very cautious about everything that is going  to happen, and the last thing that she wants to happen is to pull any threads of her past. She procrastinates the process of obtaining the permission paper from her former husband as long as it is possible. Some women end up having to wait long years till their kids grow up to the age of 18, when they can travel abroad without obtaining any permission from their biological father.