Eviction of Spouse from Housing in Divorce Judgment

There are a number of crucial issues to be resolved by the court during divorce proceedings. Without any doubt, the problem of common marital immovable property is of vital importance. The court ruling on a divorce matter usually decides on the way of using the housing where both spouses lived prior to the divorce. In the context of divorce you may need to know whether it is possible to legally kick out your spouse from the common housing.

The answer is – yes. There are plenty of ways at your disposal to legally get rid of your husband or wife on the grounds of domestic violence, alcohol or drug abuse. The notion describing this process is called “eviction”. The corresponding articles and legal acts which you should rely on, if you want to use the above-mentioned right, depend on circumstances of the case. For example, legal grounds in the situation of evicting a former spouse or unregistered partner differ from legal grounds in case a current spouse is to be evicted. The proper legal norm to rely on in case of divorce proceedings is enshrined in article 58 paragraph 2 of the Polish Family and Guardianship Code.

To make a claim on the basis of the mentioned article successful, three general prerequisites are to be met. Firstly, the parties of the proceedings are to permanently reside at one place. Secondly, there is to be a kind of reprehensible behavior by one of the spouses. Thirdly, this behavior is to make living in the common housing unbearable. It goes without saying, that any form of reprehensible behavior including domestic violence, aggression or drug addiction should be proved by evidence. It is allowed to present your evidence to the court in different forms such as photos, testimony of witnesses, audio or video records. To make the claim more convincing, it seems plausible to combine various types of evidence. Moreover, in order to decide on eviction, the court must clearly establish the connection between the second (reprehensible behavior) and the third (non-possibility of living together under one roof) factors. Apart from that, the court in its practice (see, for instance, the case number I ACa 1209/18) set the criteria of continuity and persistence. It means that for constituting the ground for eviction the above-mentioned reprehensible behavior must not be sporadic, but last for quite a sufficient period repeating from time to time.

Since the court judging on a divorce matter needs time to analyze all the circumstances of the situation, the process of coming up with a decision might take quite a long time. Thus, you can legally ask for a protective measure in the form of a temporal eviction of your spouse for the period of divorce proceedings. It means that the court (if it finds this reasonable) will force a spouse to move from the common housing till the final decision on all divorce-related matters is taken.

Without any doubts, article 58 para.2 of the Polish Family and Guardianship Code gives both spouses an extremely important instrument to combat domestic abuse or unbearable conduct of another spouse by forcing him or her to move out from the common housing. However, as it has been described in the article, for making such a claim successful a set of criteria and prerequisites should be met. Therefore, you should be extremely meticulous and attentive while formulating reasoning and collecting evidence for the eviction.