Italian administrative Court has clarified that, as long as divorce proceeding is still pending, the spouse is entitled to exercise the right of access to administrative documents according to the law N.241/1990. Then, it has been decided in favour of the appellant since she was claiming to have a legitimate and legal interest to access to her former husband’s bank documents.

In the present case, the spouse wanted to know any financial relationship between her former husband and financial intermediaries. In order to do so, she submitted an access request to such information. However, Italian public administration suspended the request.

The spouse appealed the decision before administrative Court asking the entitlement to have access to financial documents according to legitimate, legal, and concrete interest. Moreover, this same interest applies also within a pending divorce proceeding.

The administrative court has declared spouse’s interest as a protected interest that is connected to the pending divorce proceeding. Subsequently, Italian Public Administration has the legal obligation to display requested document to the applicant.