SOME REGULATORY ISSUES OF DETERMINING THE CHILD’S PLACE OF RESIDENCE IN UKRAINE

Introduction. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine led to an increase in the number of family disputes related to the determination of the child's place of residence, which caused to the emergence of a number of problematic issues regarding the application of the provisions of family legislation. Purpose. The purpose of the study is to reveal certain issues of regulation of the determination of the child's place of residence in Ukraine, which are related to establishing the best interests of the child in specific situations caused by the state of war — the presence of one of the parents in military service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, outside of Ukraine, or the presence of other circumstances, which influence decision-making on determining the child's place of residence with one of the parents. Materials and methods. The research materials include normative legal acts, scientific works, decisions of the courts of Ukraine and the European Court of Human Rights. The research was carried out using general scientific methods: dialectical, systematic, logical and descriptive. Results. The article highlights certain issues of regulating the determination of a child's place of residence in Ukraine due to the state of war. It was established that the Family Code of Ukraine contains norms that regulate the general principles of solving questions about the child's place of residence, creating only a system of coordinates of the legal field for their solution, leaving out of regulation conceptual and practical issues that directly affect the assessment of circumstances that must be taken into account when determining place of residence of the child, based on the principle of the best interests of the child. It was established that the concept of the best interests of the child is provided for in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and its content is revealed in a number of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, which are a source of law and are applicable when considering cases about the child's place of residence. It was concluded that the application by courts of acts of international law ratified by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the practice of the European Court allows to quickly respond to the problems of determining the place of residence of a child in conditions of martial law and to form judicial practice aimed at protecting the rights of the child. Discussion. In the following scholar studies, it is proposed to consider the possibility of creating a mechanism for responding to «artificial» lawsuits about the determination of the child's place of residence in the absence of an actual subject of the dispute, as well as the issue of implementing the principle of a fair balance between the interests of the child and the interests of the parents when resolving the dispute about the determination of the child's place of residence.