Adults are prone to making mistakes, finding themselves in difficult life situations, and experiencing conflicts with people who were once close to them. This is an ordinary backdrop of human life, so to speak, a set of topics for conversation. But when small children get caught up in this whirlwind of adult conflict, many otherwise resolvable situations threaten to take on a particularly dramatic significance. This story is about how our firm's attorneys helped everyone involved avoid disaster.
Love with Baggage
Conditions for Family Reunification
For family reunification in Germany, applicants generally need to prove sufficient income, adequate housing and, for spouses, a basic A1-level language certificate (§ 30 AufenthG).
Sergei is a German citizen — an adult, professionally and financially established man. In 2016 he married Victoria, a Russian citizen and resident of St. Petersburg. Victoria worked as the head of one of the divisions of a large company. In fact, it was business contacts that made Sergei and Victoria's meeting possible. Their business cooperation soon grew into feelings of love. After a while, Sergei proposed to Victoria, and they married. For Victoria, this was her second marriage. But her child from her first marriage was no obstacle to the relationship — a friendly relationship developed between Sergei and Victoria's son from her first marriage. The proverbial "suitcase without a handle" — as people describe circumstances that cause plenty of trouble but cannot yet be changed — in this story was Victoria's first husband. His entrance onto the scene of this story comes later.
Having formalized their relationship at the registry office in St. Petersburg, Sergei and Victoria built a life plan for themselves. Victoria continued to pursue her career in Russia for a while longer. The income and social standing that her job gave her allowed her to feel like an independent, professionally accomplished woman. Moving to Germany would, of course, have lowered her status on nearly every front. Being a rational person, Victoria was also well aware that her husband's income alone would not be enough to maintain the standard of living the new family was accustomed to. Fortunately, the distance between St. Petersburg and Berlin is just an hour and a half by plane.
They Flew In
In the spring of 2017, Victoria and her six-year-old son Yegor flew to Berlin to visit Sergei. Walks around the city, trips through the scenic countryside surrounding the German capital — everything filled the three of them with a sense of joy and satisfaction with life. But during one of their trips to the Spreewald, Victoria began to feel unwell. Pain in her lower abdomen, nausea, vomiting. The trip had to be cut short, and they rushed to see a doctor. Victoria was kept in the clinic, and it soon emerged that Victoria was pregnant — the family would soon have a new addition. The only thing that clouded this happy news for the couple was that the pregnancy was at risk of miscarriage. To preserve the pregnancy, she needed to remain at the clinic, and there could be no question of a flight or a lengthy journey.
By that point, Victoria's vacation was already coming to an end, and her tourist visa was about to expire. Victoria and her son risked ending up in Germany with no legal status. For many women and couples, pregnancy is a reason for fundamental life changes — and so it was in this case. The idea of continuing a career in Russia was set aside. The family's future and the health of the unborn child were far weightier considerations than financial independence and social standing. Either Sergei or Victoria urgently needed to change their place of residence. They settled on Berlin, and it was with this question — how to arrange for Victoria and her son to stay in Berlin — that the family came to us, as soon as Victoria was permitted to move around the city.
A Suitcase Without a Handle
Victoria's situation, and her chances of staying in Berlin and filing the documents for family reunification with the immigration authority there directly, presented no real difficulties beyond the need to properly assemble all the required documents. What made the situation extremely complicated was Victoria's son — or rather, his biological father. Holding full parental rights over the child's upbringing and over decisions concerning his future, he could make Victoria and Sergei's life in Berlin unbearable.
In psychology, there is a concept known as an emotionally unresolved divorce. Human relationships that can be described as healthy are built on mutual respect, respect for the other person's freedom, and a rational approach to whatever issues arise. A marriage that lacked these elements is often still carried, even after it ends, by one or both former spouses. This unresolved resentment — a continued treatment of the other person as property — shows up in mild cases as avoiding saying the ex's name or constantly comparing the past relationship to any new one. But that is only in mild cases of an emotionally unresolved marriage. Sometimes such people are capable of truly terrible acts against a former spouse. And almost always, where there are children in common, the children become a difficult sticking point, if not a battlefield over the past.
The attitude of Victoria's ex-husband toward her was exactly of that kind. After the divorce, the man saw his son only occasionally, with long gaps in contact. He took no part in his son's life financially. But at every contact, he made a point of telling the child that Victoria was a bad mother and that she had deeply wronged his father. Whether Victoria's son would be able to stay in Germany with her depended on two factors. First, if the boy's father went to the police claiming that Victoria had abducted their son, the child and his mother would soon have had to endure the terrible stress of the police inevitably, and quite lawfully, removing the child from his Berlin family. The child would then have been placed in a special children's home, and later deported to Russia, back to his father. It is not hard to imagine how Victoria's family life would have unfolded after that, far from her son. The second issue concerned the sheer difficulty of obtaining the necessary permit for the child's permanent stay in Germany while the other parent lived abroad and had a place of residence there. In this situation, our firm's attorneys could only put before Victoria the option of pursuing the termination of her ex-husband's parental rights.
Christmas Before Christmas
The grounds for depriving one or both parents of parental rights include a lack of financial support for the child, non-participation in decisions concerning the child's life and future, and physical or psychological abuse of the child. The first two grounds alone were quite sufficient to initiate proceedings in Russia to strip Victoria's ex-husband of his parental rights. What's more, judging by the accounts of those who had regular contact with the man, the sorry excuse for a father showed every sign of alcoholism. Victoria hired an attorney in St. Petersburg, who received power of attorney to represent her interests and her child's interests, and the proceedings got underway with the involvement of the guardianship authorities and the public prosecutor's office.
The tactic our attorneys proposed for solving Victoria and Sergei's problem was to make use of the factor of time. Once the proceedings to strip the father of Victoria's son of his parental rights began in Russia, Sergei applied to the immigration authority requesting family reunification. We took advantage of the heavy current workload of that authority's officials in order to gain time. In the application, our firm's attorneys justified the need to grant Victoria and her son the requisite status on the grounds that Victoria could not travel due to the risk of miscarriage, and that her son could not return to Russia because of the ongoing proceedings there to strip his father of parental rights. And, as fate would have it, shortly before Christmas and before the scheduled visit to the immigration authority, Victoria gave birth, and just two days before the visit, the decision arrived from Russia stripping Victoria's ex-husband of his parental rights.
And so, with our attorneys' professional assistance plus a bit of luck, this almost Christmas-like story came to pass.
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