Spousal alimony during separation does not require prior cohabitation

If spouses live apart, they are obliged to support each other in the event of separation. Spouses who have all managed from separate funds and have not formed an economic unit also owe each other separation support. This applies even if the spouses have not lived together at any time after the marriage, have not coordinated their life dispositions and there are no economic ties between them. Nor is it an obstacle to the calculation of alimony in cases of separation, that it is based on the life circumstances that shaped the marriage, and in this constellation the marriage was shaped precisely by the economic independence of both spouses. The Federal Court of Justice has clarified this in a case with strong international law implications in which the spouses both came from Indian families which had initiated the marriage. The wife has German nationality, lives in Frankfurt and earns €2,670 net per month from her employment with a bank, while the husband, who lives in Paris, has British nationality and earns €5,000 as a trader. In addition, he has income from renting an apartment amounting to 1,000 €, and the residential advantage for the other condominium he uses himself was set at 500 €. After the marriage on 23 August 2017, the spouses separated again in August 2018. In between, there have been repeated visiting contacts of the one with the other on weekends and a one-time three-week stay of the wife with her husband in Paris without any sexual contact. Both spouses have kept their own accounts and each managed their own affairs; only during the wife's visits to Paris did the husband pay for the purchases. The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main has awarded the wife separation allowance of €1,585 from December 2018. This was confirmed by the Federal Court of Justice in its Beschluss vom 19. Februar 2020 (XII ZB 358/19) Separation maintenance can only be forfeited if the spouses had a firm intention at the time of the marriage never to establish marital cohabitation, which the XII Senate did not assume in this case. The decision also contains important statements on international family law. On the one hand, it is confirmed that the fact that the husband is a British national as one of the parties involved and that the United Kingdom left the EU at the end of 31 January 2020 does not prevent the German courts from determining the international jurisdiction of the German courts in accordance with the European Regulation Verordnung (EG) Nr. 4/2009 on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of judgments and cooperation in family matters of 18 December 2008. Similarly, the determination of the applicable law under the Haager Unterhaltsprotokoll vom 23. November 2007 does not depend on whether the case has links to another Contracting State in accordance with the principle of reciprocity; the fact that the Hague Protocol on Maintenance does not apply to the United Kingdom does not prevent its applicability in this case.