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10 divorce mistakes you must avoid

     

    10 divorce mistakes you must avoid

     

    Separations and divorces of spouses are usually spontaneous: feelings determine the course of action. Those who act in ignorance of the legal requirements risk ending their lives at a dead end.

     

    Try to avoid these most common mistakes:

     
    Mistake 1: Don’t endlessly hope for the restoration of your marriage.

    Hope dies last. If your marriage is broken, you should not put off your decision. Do you fervently hope that your partner will find his way back to you, live in constant tension? True to the motto “Better an end with horror than a horror without an end,” you should decide whether to go through with the separation yourself or accept that your partner has separated.

    If you believe you can actually continue your marriage, you should have comprehensible reasons. Possible short-term attempts at reconciliation do not harm the expiration of the separation year.

     
    Mistake 2: Acting without financial planning.

    If you separate spontaneously and do not have sufficient income of your own, you need to know what you will buy your bread from tomorrow. It will be easier for you if you save your own money. Do not hope that your partner will voluntarily and immediately pay child support and separation maintenance.

    If possible, use the time before your separation to gather or copy all economically relevant documents. This will give you a better chance of establishing your financial claims if you are informed about your spouse’s income and asset situation.
     

    Mistake 3: Continuing to maintain your joint bank account.

    If you keep a joint bank account, you must expect that your partner will withdraw the entire balance or use an existing overdraft facility to the limit. Make sure that you immediately divert any incoming money due to you to your own account. An online account can be set up immediately on your PC. Inform the bank that you have separated and that the overdraft facility will be stopped. Cancel the account.

     

    divorce
     
    Mistake 4: You think you are the one who has to leave the marital home.

    During the separation period, it does not matter who owns the apartment or signed the lease. Rather, what matters is that the one(s) who has a priority right to use the marital home is the one who has an increased need to use it. In particular, if your child lives in the apartment or you cannot reasonably be expected to move out due to illness, you are the one who has the priority right to remain in the marital apartment at least until the divorce.

     
    Mistake 5: You think you have to earn your own money immediately after the separation.

    The legislator understands the time of your separation as a probationary period. Your family circumstances should remain as they are for the time being. Maybe you reconcile again. Then pick up where you left off in your life together. If you have not been working so far, you do not need to earn your own money just because of the separation. If you work part-time, you don’t need to start a full-time job.
     
    Rather, in order to maintain your standard of living, you are entitled to separation maintenance. However, the longer your separation lasts, the more your obligation to earn your own money intensifies. Only after the divorce do you have to provide for yourself unless you are in need of maintenance due to your living situation.

     
    Mistake 6: You report your partner for black money.

    Revenge can also be bitter. If you report your partner to the tax office because he or she is allegedly stashing away black money or has a secret account abroad, you expose yourself to the suspicion of aiding and abetting if you know about it.
     
    In addition, you must expect an unpleasant house search by the tax investigation department in order to find evidence, even when you have no knowledge of the circumstances. If your partner is “assessed a fine for tax purposes”, you will reduce your prospects for separation maintenance, spousal maintenance, child maintenance, and equalization of gains.

     
    Mistake 7: You hope for a flash divorce.

     
    While there are flash marriages a la Las Vegas, there are no flash divorces. Every divorce requires the completion of the separation year. Only in exceptional cases, in which you cannot be expected to complete the separation year for reasons related to the person of your spouse (e.g. physical violence), can you obtain an early divorce before the end of the separation year.
    However, such cases of hardship play only a minor role in court practice due to their exceptional nature. Since you must prove the circumstances to the court’s satisfaction, it may be more advantageous from a time perspective to simply wait for the separation year to expire and then obtain a divorce.

     

    Mistake 8: You think you will get a guilty divorce because of your marital misconduct.

    Marital misconduct was only relevant as long as divorce law was based on the fault principle. This fault principle has been replaced by the breakdown principle. Your marriage can be divorced if it has “broken down” and thus failed and you no longer want to restore your cohabitation.
    Whether and who is to blame for the divorce remains irrelevant. Even if your spouse has broken marital fidelity, you cannot benefit from this under divorce law. Marital misconduct only plays a role in maintenance claims in justified cases.

     

    Mistake 9: You shorten the separation year untruthfully.

    You can only file your divorce petition with the court after you have completed the separation year. In order to get divorced more quickly, you should not under any circumstances truthfully shorten the separation year in consultation with your spouse. You risk that your partner may feel obliged to tell the truth in the eye of the judge at the oral divorce hearing.

    If the separation year is then actually not completed, you must expect that the judge will reject your divorce petition with a fee and that you will collect a criminal charge on suspicion of litigation fraud.

     

    Mistake 10: You think you will get a guilty divorce because of your marital misconduct.

    Marital misconduct was only relevant as long as divorce law was based on the fault principle. This fault principle has been replaced by the breakdown principle. Your marriage can be divorced if it has “broken down” and thus failed and you no longer want to restore your cohabitation.

    Whether and who is to blame for the divorce remains irrelevant. Even if your spouse has broken marital fidelity, you cannot benefit from this under divorce law. Marital misconduct only plays a role in maintenance claims in justified cases.

     

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