"What cancels out the force of gravity? The force of habit." Stanisław Jerzy Lec
However beautiful the feelings at the start of a relationship may be, no one, unfortunately, is immune to bitter grievances and a painful divorce. Alexei (name changed) came to us right at the stage of divorcing his wife. After several years of marriage, Alexei and Marina (name changed) had a final falling-out and decided it would be best for everyone to dissolve the marriage, after which Alexei moved into another apartment.
Under § 1565(2) of the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch), spouses must live apart for at least one year (German: Trennungsjahr) before a divorce can be granted. Once the divorce proceedings had begun, Marina cut off all personal contact with Alexei, while all of her demands — down to requiring him to remove his belongings from the apartment within a set deadline — were relayed to our client through her lawyer. As the statutory separation period was drawing to a close, Marina's lawyer demanded that Alexei disclose his income, with a view to saddling him with the court costs of the divorce proceedings. In addition, our client's wife demanded that he transfer to her bank account half of the sum received from selling a car that had been bought during the marriage with the spouses' joint funds. Every rebuttal Alexei offered was disregarded by his wife's lawyer. This is precisely what brought Alexei to our law firm.
Important at Divorce
Under § 1565(2) BGB, spouses must live apart for at least one year (Trennungsjahr) before a divorce can be granted.
Alexei told our lawyer that he had only arrived in Germany a few years earlier, had spent a long time learning German, and had then begun vocational training, so that from the moment of the marriage right up to the present he had not been working and was living on state benefits — and therefore lacked sufficient funds to cover the cost of litigation. What is more, according to our client, the car had been bought shortly after the marriage using exclusively his own savings, and it had been sold before the decision to divorce was even made.
Since the car's sale-and-purchase agreement had been lost, our lawyer contacted the seller and requested the necessary copy of the contract. An official letter was then sent to Alexei's wife's lawyer, setting out our client's position on Marina's claims. The lawyer stressed that the car had not only been bought but also sold during the marriage, and that the proceeds from the sale had been used by both spouses for their shared household. The divorce proceedings had officially begun in September 2014, whereas the car had already been sold back in February 2014 — a fact that could be confirmed by the person who had bought the car from our client.
Alexei's wife was unwilling to accept these arguments, and her lawyer kept demanding payment of half the proceeds from the car sale. Our lawyer, however, patiently and persuasively defended Alexei's position.
At that point, Marina resorted to an aggressive tactic, filing a police report claiming her husband had stolen the car and sold it without her knowledge or consent. Alexei was very upset to learn of this, since it was entirely untrue, but our lawyer calmed him down and advised settling all matters amicably in order to save time and money.
With our client's consent, a letter was sent to Marina informing her of Alexei's intention to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, even though he stood by his position. Our client offered to pay Marina a certain sum of money in exchange for her withdrawing her unfounded criminal complaint and treating the question of her share of the sale proceeds as settled. Marina found this proposal appealing, so the parties signed a settlement agreement and the criminal proceedings against our client were closed. Alexei was thus finally able to officially close the book on his relationship with his former wife and avoid the trouble of criminal proceedings.
This example from our law firm's practice shows how important it is to consult an experienced lawyer in good time — especially in family matters, where personal grievances can get in the way of a sober assessment of the situation and of finding a way out of it. The opposing side may resort to various tricks, sometimes dishonest and improper ones, to achieve its aims, but an experienced lawyer, familiar with the possible tactics and stratagems the other side may use, will help you avoid falling into the traps that have been laid.
All rights reserved. Copying or republishing this article requires a link to the original source.
