The first question is rarely the one people expect. It is not what the law says. It is which country’s court decides, and which country’s law that court will apply. Those two answers shape everything that follows, and they are not always the same country.
What this covers
Divorce with an international element. Spouses living in different countries, or a Bulgarian marriage that needs to be ended while neither party is here.
Recognition. Having a foreign divorce or court judgment recognised in Bulgaria, which is often needed before anything else can be registered or sold.
Children. Parental rights, contact arrangements and maintenance where the parents live in different countries, including enforcing what a court has already ordered.
Travel and removal of a child from the country, including where the other parent refuses consent.
Child abduction under the Hague Convention. These matters move quickly and the early days matter.
Parentage. Acknowledgement, contesting it, and establishing it through the courts.
Marrying in Bulgaria as a foreign national, and the documents that requires.
When to instruct a lawyer
Before you sign an agreement that has been handed to you ready.
Many people come after they have already agreed to something that seemed reasonable at the time and later proves difficult to change. Maintenance and contact arrangements can be varied, but that takes grounds, time and a fresh set of proceedings.
One thing people get wrong
They assume that a divorce granted in one country automatically settles everything in the other.
It does not. A foreign judgment often has to be recognised in Bulgaria before it has effect here, and until that happens the position on paper in Bulgaria may be different from the position where you live.