With the purpose of establishing alimony within a divorce proceeding, Italian Cassation Court confirms that you need to take into consideration former wife’s sacrifice of her professional life expectations. Especially when such sacrifice took place with the purpose of prioritize former husband’s professional life.
In the context of alimony evaluation, judge needs to take into account those professional sacrifices that former wife made to devote herself to the family while the husband was pursuing his professional objectives.
According to the Italian Law, alimony has a compensatory and equalizing purpose; both ranging within the solidarity principle. This means that in case of alimony reduction, this shall occur only when adequately justified.
The Italian Court of Cassation established this very principle within the sentence n.3852/2020. First instance Court confirmed a €2.000.00 alimony for the former wife. The husband submitted appeal against alimony amount claiming that former wife’s working capacity and commercial expertise should impact on alimony quantification. Based on that, second instance Court confirmed alimony halving. Then, the wife submitted an appeal based on the following points:
– Second instance Court reasoning was not taking into account economic condition differences between former spouses nor her contribution to family life during the marriage, including any sacrifice she made to make such contribution;
– She disputes the work capacity claimed by the Court;
Based on previous appeal motivations, Italian Cassation Court had to take into account wife’s contribution to family life both in terms of economic and affective spheres. Subsequently, even though alimony objective is not safeguarding the standard of living during the marriage, it must be based on evaluation concerning spouses’ contribution to family life.
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