Child Travel Consent - Notarized Parental Consent Drafted or Translated the Same Day

When a child travel consent is required

Georgian border control requires a notarized consent from the non-travelling parent (or from both parents) when a minor who is a Georgian citizen or resident leaves Georgia with only one parent, with another adult or alone, and airlines and foreign border authorities apply their own versions of the rule: many European countries, Turkey, Russia, the United States and Canada recommend or require a written parental consent for a minor travelling without both parents, and airlines refuse boarding to unaccompanied minors without one. Beyond borders, consents are asked for by schools and camps abroad, by embassies issuing visas to minors, by sports federations sending youth teams to tournaments, by hospitals treating a child abroad, and by the relatives or nannies who care for a child while parents work abroad. The consent names the child, the travelling adult, the destination and the dates, and states the parent's agreement, and its form - notarized, sometimes apostilled, in the language of the border it will be shown at - decides whether it works.

Drafting a consent at our notary: bilingual, with an interpreter

The fastest route for a parent in Georgia is to sign the consent at our notary at Agmashenebeli 117. We draft the consent in Georgian and, on the same page or as a parallel column, in the language of the destination country or of the travelling adult - English, Russian, German, Italian, Turkish, Hebrew, Chinese or any of our 49 languages - so that the Georgian border officer, the airline and the foreign border officer each read their own version of one notarized document. A parent who does not speak Georgian signs with our interpreter present, as Georgian law requires for any notarial act by a person who does not understand the language, and the interpreter is recorded in the deed. The notary certifies the parent's signature, and the consent is ready within the hour; where it will be shown to a foreign authority that requires legalized documents, we apostille it in one to three business days. Consents for repeated travel over a period, for a named accompanying adult or for a child travelling alone are drafted to match the specific need, and we advise on the wording foreign borders expect.

Consents issued abroad: translation for Georgian borders and schools

When the parent who stays behind lives abroad, the consent is signed there - before a local notary, at a Georgian consulate, or, in some countries, at a police station or municipal office - and arrives in Georgia in a foreign language. Georgian border control and Georgian schools, camps and hospitals need a notarized Georgian translation of it, and, where the consent was notarized by a foreign notary, an apostille (or consular legalization for non-Hague countries) on the original; a consent signed at a Georgian consulate needs neither apostille nor translation of the Georgian text. We translate foreign consents into Georgian and notarize the translation in 1-2 hours from a photo, checking that the consent carries what a Georgian officer looks for - the child's full name and date of birth as in the passport, the travelling adult's details, the destination and the dates - and warning the parent where a foreign form is too general to satisfy Georgian practice.

Guardianship, custody and single parents

Consent is simple when both parents are alive, known and cooperative; the difficult cases are the others. A single parent shown alone on the child's birth certificate travels with the birth certificate translated; a parent with sole custody by court decision travels with the decision translated and, abroad, apostilled; a widowed parent with the death certificate; a child in the care of grandparents or other relatives with a guardianship decision or a notarized authorization from the parents covering care, medical treatment, schooling and travel. Parents working abroad who leave children with relatives in Georgia sign broad authorizations at a Georgian consulate or a foreign notary, which we translate for Georgian schools, clinics and the border, and parents who cannot agree find that a consent refused by one parent can be replaced only by a court decision, which we translate for the border once obtained. We draft and translate all of these, and we tell parents plainly which document each situation requires.

What border officers and airlines actually check

A consent is read quickly at a border, and the details that cause trouble are predictable: a child's name spelled differently on the consent and the passport, a consent naming the wrong travelling adult, dates that do not cover the trip, a consent in a language the officer cannot read, a foreign consent without the apostille an officer expects, a photocopy where the original is required, and a consent signed by a parent whose relationship to the child is not evident from the documents carried. We take the child's and parents' names from their passports, draft the dates with a margin, produce the consent in the languages of every border on the itinerary, apostille it where needed, and advise parents to carry the child's birth certificate (translated where the trip crosses a language border) with the consent, since many officers ask for it to link the signing parent to the child.

Pricing, timing and how to order

A consent drafted at our notary is priced as a notarial act at the notary's tariff plus our drafting and, where needed, the interpreter's attendance; the translation of a foreign consent at a fixed rate per document plus the notary's fee; the apostille at the state fee plus handling. A consent is drafted, signed and notarized within the hour when a parent attends, and a foreign consent is translated and notarized within 1-2 hours from a photo.

To order a consent, send the child's and the parents' passport photos, the travelling adult's details, the destination and the dates on WhatsApp or Telegram and tell us which languages the borders on the route read; we draft it and book the notary appointment at Agmashenebeli 117, near Marjanishvili Metro. To translate a foreign consent, send a photo of every page and of any apostille; the translation is ready in 1-2 hours and delivered by scan, by collection, by same-day courier in Tbilisi or by courier to any city.

Frequently asked questions

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