Issues concerning divorce in European Court of Human Rights case law

Abstract

The article deals with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in the context of the individuals’ possibility to dissolveone’s marriage in general and other issues related to divorce.Starting with the case of Johnston and Others v. Ireland (1986) ECHR made it clear that a right to divorce cannot be derived fromArticle 12 of the Convention (Right to marry). The Court stated that drafters of the Convention had no intention to include in Article12 any guarantee of a right to have the ties of marriage dissolved by divorce. On the other hand, in case of F. v. Switzerland (1987)ECHR stated that if national legislation allows divorce, which is not a requirement of the Convention, Article 12 secures for divorcedpersons the right to remarry without unreasonable restrictions.In more recent cases the Court dealt with issues concerning the lengthy divorce proceedings that impaired applicants’ right tomarry again. In this aspect the Court would not exclude that a failure to conduct divorce proceedings within a reasonable time could incertain circumstances raise an issue under Article 12 of the Convention. However, in such cases the Court emphasizes more on the issueof the violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention in light of the failure of the domestic authorities to conduct the divorce proceedingsefficiently.Another side of divorce proceedings was reviewed in case of Babiarz v. Poland (2017) where the applicant complained that byrefusing to grant him a divorce the authorities had prevented him from marrying the woman with whom he had been living and had achild. The situation arose due to the provisions of Polish law that a divorce could not be granted if it had been requested by the partywhose fault it was that the marriage had broken down, if the other party refused to consent. In the Court’s view, if the provisions of theConvention cannot be interpreted as guaranteeing a possibility, under domestic law, of obtaining divorce, they cannot, a fortiori, beinterpreted as guaranteeing a favourable outcome in divorce proceedings instituted under the provision of that law allowing for adivorce.