Notaries in Ukraine

I knew that notaries in Ukraine are more like lawyers, but I didn’t realize they behave like royalty. Yesterday we needed to notarize our signatures on 2 letters: one for the inspector, the other for SDA. One would think – what’s the big deal to notarize 2 signatures, right? Wrong! There are 2 types of notaries – private and public. Private ones charge more money, but there are less people waiting in line. We went to the private one first. When she heard that our documents are adoption related, she said she’s not allowed to notarize any adoption documents. According to the law, private notaries can’t notarize adoption documents that go abroad. But in this case they were staying in Ukraine! Didn’t matter – she didn’t want to do it. Then we went to the public notary. It was a stern looking soviet style woman. She looked at our American passports and demanded a translation. Luckily we had an apostilled translation, which was also notarized by a Ukrainian notary in Kiev. She looked at it, looked back at us and started yelling: “What is that? Are you idiots? Why did you put apostilles on the passport copy? Go to a translation agency and bring me a real translation!” We were speechless for a second, and then she dropped another bomb on us. She said that as foreigners we are required to get special ID codes, and without these special codes she’s not allowed notarize anything! Our facilitator immediately looked up the notary law, and found a part where it explains that indeed foreigners are needed these ID codes, but only in cases when they are involved in commercial deals. So, as you can see, this woman was not only rude, but also she had no clue about the law. We moved on. We found another private notary. There were no people waiting in line! It gave us a hope – maybe he’ll want some business? We were in luck. He didn’t demand a passport translation, he didn’t say anything about not being able to notarize adoption documents, and he didn’t even ask about ID codes! Just an hour later we got our letters! It took that long for one of his secretaries to type the letters (the notaries never sign the letters typed by somebody else – they need to approve the wording), for other secretary to write something in a special book, and for us to actually sign it. When we signed in English, the way we usually sign everything – first and last name - they were very surprised because in Ukraine people sign with some kind of abbreviation, just a couple of letters. Then they also asked us to write our last name in Russian! Obviously we could do it, but what if we couldn’t? Anyway, we paid 260 grivna ($52) for the services and left with our 2 treasures. The usual price for the public notary is 3 grivna per document, and for the public is 15 grivna ($3) per document, but of course we didn’t argue and happily paid :)

We were also going to the inspector’s office back and forth several times yesterday and today. Let me tell you: for us speaking Russian is a definite disadvantage. I would rather not understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Of course I knew about the envelopes going back and forth, we were prepared for that. But I was not prepared for all this bureaucracy. I thought our being from Odessa will help us, but it doesn’t help us in any way. The region Raisa is located now (she’s staying with her guardian) doesn’t have any orphanages, so they’ve never had an adoption case involving Americans. And you know the perception about all rich Americans. Especially if our dossier lists our 5-digit income. It doesn’t help that in Russian they use dots and commas in a different way. For example, 10.5 is written 10,5 and there are other differences. The inspector read our income not in thousands, but in millions. She asked – so you have “such and such” millions? We had to explain, that we wish we had so many millions, but no, it’s just thousands. If I could tell you everything, you wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, we have our paperwork for SDA, and we just sent it by train this evening, so the first step is done. As soon as we have SDA permission, we can schedule a court date. I don’t know when it’s going to be, hopefully soon.

But despite the difficulties with the paperwork, we are very happy to be able to spend a lot of time bonding with Raya. She goes to school in the mornings, but in the afternoons we are running around together. She’s such a sweet and good girl, we are very fortunate to have her!

We were really looking forward going to back to Odessa, but with all this paperwork chase going on, we don’t even have time to call our friends! Hopefully after the court we’ll be able to relax and enjoy our time here. But so far it’s no vacation at all. Odessa is beautiful in downtown, but what we really want to see is our old apartment buildings where Oleg and I grew up, the school where we were classmates for 10 years, were both our mothers worked, and where I worked as a math teacher after graduating from university. I think we’ll definitely take a day off from doing paperwork this weekend and take a trip down the memory lane.

I have to confess: I didn’t wear my high-heeled stiletto boots yet. In Kiev all the sidewalks were icy, and I decided I don’t have enough experience to wear the high heels on ice. Here in Odessa we are running around all day long, and it’s not very convenient to do wearing stiletto heels. Though all ladies in Odessa are such a pros walking all day long in them.

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!!! We have a lot to be thankful for this year, so we’ll definitely have a belated turkey dinner later this year! Our wonderful friends Lena and Kostya made us a whole chicken, and we celebrated Thanksgiving “chicken” style together.