Divorce in Russia and American Pre-Nup

Each party of an agreement has a right to dispute the agreement.

Although on practice it's unlikely to do if there was no violations while concluding the agreement.

According to the Article 161 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation, the spouses' property rights and duties are defined by the law of the country where they have common place of living. In case of absence of the common residence, the jurisdiction is the country of their last common place of living. Property rights and duties of those spouses who did not have a common place of living are defined in the territory of Russian Federation by the law of Russian Federation.

By concluding pre-nuptial agreement, the spouses who do not have common citizenship or common place of living, can choose the law to be applied to define their rights and duties according to the pre-nuptial agreement. Please note that it is said in your agreement. In case when the spouses did not choose the applied law, there will be provisions of Article 161 Part 1 of Family Code of Russia applied to the pre-nuptial agreement.

Bank accounts are different than real estate property. The real estate property in terms of Article 30 Part 1 of the Civil Process Code of Russian Federation is: land parcels, subsoil parcels, water sources, forests, gardens, buildings, including residential and commercial, houses, other constructions solidly connected with land.

Nerveless I think that Russian court does not have any right to divide your foreign accounts. There are many reasons for that: provisions of Article 161 Part 1 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation (see above), the absence of agreement between our countries about legal help, the absence of the mechanism for concluding and execution of such decision, provision of the lawsuit.

Even if the fact that everything is in your favor, in the case your wife files such suit, you will need a professional lawyer.

I think that property division should not be in the same process with divorce. If these requirement are filed simultaneously, judge by request of respondent and in accordance to Article 151 Part 2 of the Civil Process Code of Russian Federation will have to extract property matter into a separate case.

Yes, if you file your divorce and property division suit to the American court first, you will release all the other questions, since if your wife files a suit in Russia, her case will be repetitive and should be left without consideration.

If the decision on this matter will be made in United States, the repetitive consideration of the case between the same parties about the same subject is not acceptable.