The Verkhovna Rada has registered a draft of the new version of the Civil Code of Ukraine (Bill No. 14394 of January 22, 2026), which provides for the possibility of a court granting the right to marry from the age of 14 in the event of a woman’s pregnancy or the birth of her child.
The general marriage age is proposed to remain at 18 for both women and men, but the court may grant the right to marry from the age of 16, and in exceptional cases, from the age of 14 in the event of pregnancy or childbirth.
According to the parliament’s website, the bill is currently being reviewed by committees. Earlier, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk announced the registration of a new version of the Civil Code as a large-scale initiative to recodify private law.
In Ukraine, 165,590 marriages were registered in 2025, which is 10.2% or 15,380 more than in 2024, according to a report on state registration of civil status acts by the Ministry of Justice.
According to the report, the number of registered divorces fell by 23.4%, or 8,010, to 26,280, including those by court decision, which fell by 27.9% to 950.
In 2024, the situation was reversed: the number of marriages decreased by 19.3%, while the number of divorces increased by 42.2%.
According to the Ministry of Justice, in the second half of 2025, compared to the first half, the number of registered marriages increased by 41.4% to 96,990, while the number of registered divorces increased by 7.1% to 13,590.
While the average number of marriages per divorce in Ukraine last year was 6.3, the highest rate was in Kyiv (10), Lviv and Zakarpattia (8.7 and 8.6), and Rivne (8.3). The lowest ratio was in Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Poltava, Vinnytsia, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, where it ranged from 4.3 to 4.8 times.
According to the Ministry of Justice, in the pre-war year of 2021, 214,01 marriages and 29,59 thousand divorces were registered in Ukraine, while in the year the war began, the number of marriages increased to 222,89 thousand, and the number of divorces decreased to 17,89 thousand.
