In my practice, I represented a case concerning child residence and contact arrangements where both parents were foreign nationals, but the family had been living in Russia for a long period of time.
One of the key issues was whether Russian courts had jurisdiction despite the absence of permanent registration and the parties’ temporary immigration status in Russia.
The case ultimately reached the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, where I succeeded in overturning the lower courts’ decisions.
In international family disputes of this kind, the decisive factors are often not only formal immigration documents, but also the factual circumstances of the child’s life:
- the duration of residence;
- integration into the social environment;
- education;
- medical supervision;
- the centre of the child’s everyday life.
These factors frequently become central to determining international jurisdiction and the competence of the court.
