There are several areas in which the Catalan Civil Law and that applicable in the rest of Spain do not coincide, something logical considering that there is a differentiated Catalan Civil Code whose rules apply in this autonomous community in what affects these matters.
A clear example is Family Law and, in this regard, today we comment on a ruling that is giving much to talk about, which allows the spouse who maintains the right of use of the family home in case of separation or divorce to live with the new partner without losing this right of use of the home,thus configuring a criterion opposite to that maintained by the Supreme Court, which is based on the Spanish Civil Code.
On the contrary, in the decision that we are going to comment, dictated by a court of Barcelona, the legal support is found in the Catalan Civil Code, which does allow this extreme. Consult us your case without obligation. Specifically, as reported by the Col-lectiu Ronda in a statement, the head of the Court of First Instance No. 7 of Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona), Maria Antonia Raedo Santos, has issued a ruling that allows the spouse who maintains the right of use of the family home in case of separation or divorce to live with a new partner without automatically losing this right.
Thus, the ruling prioritizes the Catalan Civil Code and resolves in a different sense to the criterion recently exhibited by the Supreme Court, which in November ruled that stable cohabitation with a new partner “extinguished the right of use of the family home after a divorce”.
The high court considered in this sentence, which confirmed one of the Audiencia de Valladolid, that the entry of a third person in the house made it lose its former nature of family home “to be used for another different family”, and admitted that this new person substantially changed the circumstances that led to agree the conditions of separation.
Habitual cohabitation in the home with a new partner
In the case we are dealing with today, the Court of Cerdanyola makes the Catalan Civil Code prevail over the state regulation to resolve the lawsuit filed by a spouse against his ex-wife, whom he divorced in 2011. He requested that the right of use of the family home be withdrawn from her, given that she habitually lived in the home with her current partner.
In its response, the court dismissed the claim because the Catalan regulation only contemplates the extinction of the right of use as a consequence of “marriage or marital cohabitation of the beneficiary spouse with another person” when the attribution of this right of use was made on a temporary basis by necessity of the spouse, without questioning this right only because there is a new partner. This is a case that can be extrapolated to other cases of Catalan couples who have gone through a separation or divorce.
If this is your case and you have doubts as to how to proceed in any matter related to Family Law in Catalonia, contact our team of lawyers without obligation.
