Italian high court rules against huge divorce payments for life
DIVORCE should not be seen as a “setup for life”, Italy’s supreme court has said, in a landmark ruling that strips divorced spouses of the automatic right to hefty maintenance payments.
Divorcees who have independent means or can work will not automatically receive maintenance payments that in the past were assessed on the basis that ex-spouses have a right to retain the same “tenor of life” after divorce, the judges of the Court of Cassation said.
The ruling is expected to change how family law is interpreted in Italy and could end huge settlements, such as the €1.4million (£1.2million) monthly maintenance that Veronica Lario, the second wife of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, obtained when they split in 2009 amid the “bunga-bunga” sex party scandal.
The supreme court ruling was initiated by the case of American businesswoman Lisa Lowenstein and her ex-husband Vittorio Grilli, a former Italian minister of economy and finance.
The couple had an acrimonious divorce in 2013. Mr Grilli, 59, gave Ms Lowenstein a monthly maintenance payment of as much as €2million after they separated to maintain her lifestyle, but legal wrangling continued as she attempted to make Mr Grilli pay for heavy debts she had run up.
Ms Lowenstein appealed to the Italian supreme court in 2014 to receive maintenance payments for life. The Milan court of appeal had rejected her application on the grounds that her income tax returns were incomplete and her former husband’s income had “contracted” in the meantime.
The Cassation Court judges said times had changed and Italians must “overcome the wealth-based conception of marriage understood as a ‘definitive set-up’.”
The judges said they were also making the new ruling because an obligation for former spouses to pay high maintenance could constitute “an obstacle to starting a new family”, which is a right guaranteed by the European Court of Human Rights.