Divorce

Most people in Turkey fail to pay alimony to their ex-spouses, data have shown, as the government is working on a new legislation on those entitlements.

According to the data, in 49 percent of court cases, the parties agree on consensual divorce, while contested divorce accounts for 48.5 percent of divorce suits.

The mayor of the northwestern province of Bolu, Tanju Özcan, has announced that the city will charge higher wedding fees for couples if one of them is tying the knot for a second or a third time.

A couple, who got married and communicated through using Google Translate, is no longer together after the bride, an Indonesian woman, left her husband, a Turkish man, going back to her country and never coming back.

Photo Illustration: Unsplash / Jeremy Wong Weddings

According to official figures from Southeast and Central European statistical agencies, the number of marriages dropped significantly in 2020 during the pandemic, presumably because of social distancing measures and strict bans on public gatherings in many countries.

Fewer people in Turkey got married and divorced in 2020 compared to the previous year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said on Feb. 25.

"The number of people who got married was 542,314 in 2019. It was 487,270 in 2020, a 10.1 percent decrease [since the year before]," TÜİK said in its latest statistics on marriage and divorce rates.

Someone was taken into custody afterward

Six divorce cases have been heard in the past two days in the Regional Court of Blagoevgrad. The couples, who decided to end their relationship, officially split up and set a new anti-record. All six divorces were settled by mutual agreement, and as a motive the couples pointed to irreparable differences between them.

New legislation seeking to right many wrongs in the obsolete framework of Greek family law, particularly with regard to the custody of children in the event of separation, will be presented to cabinet by Justice Minister Konstantinos Tsiaras before heading to MPs for approval.

A bill reforming family law for the first time in about 40 years will be introduced in Parliament in the coming days, introducing joint custody of children.

The new legislation stipulates that the child can spend one-third of the time with the parent they don't live with, instead of just the occasional weekend or holiday provided for currently.

The non-governmental Coalition Margini together with the Network for Protection against Discrimination has filed a lawsuit, demanding the removal of a university textbook that blames women for the rising number of divorces, condemns abortion and classifies same-sex partnerships as debauchery.