Nielojalne działania uczestników postępowania rozwodowego

Abstract

The aim of this publication is to analyse the phenomenon of disloyal actions by participants in divorce proceedings, which is increasingly frequently observed in practice. Restricting my subject to divorce proceedings only does not imply that the views expressed will concern only this separate proceeding stricte. The observations and considerations made may be applied to all behaviours of parties and participants from the perspective of civil proceedings, which are characterised by a certain repetitiveness, modeling and orientation towards achieving favourable procedural effects. Disloyal actions of litigants should therefore be understood in a broad sense and considered to be all actions of an unreliable, unethical and untrustworthy nature undertaken by litigants before the court in order to achieve the expected procedural outcomes. In many cases, such actions will constitute an abuse of procedural rights. Although the term “participants in divorce proceedings” used may, at first glance, appear to be fraught with terminological error, such nomenclature is fully intentional and justified, since its scope encompasses not only the parties to divorce or separation proceedings, but also all the other participants in such proceedings, including, inter alia, attorneys, experts, probation officers, social and professional representatives and witnesses who, through their disloyal actions, direct the proceedings towards achieving the result desired by a party. In my view, only such a broad embedding of the concept of participants in proceedings will be appropriate and acceptable from the perspective of the issue at hand, as by using such a designator of meaning it will be possible to universally refer also to other proceedings and their participants in the broad sense of the concept.