The Law on Divorce and Maintenance Between Former Spouses in the Czech Republic and in Selected European Countries

A divorce as one of the forms of termination of marriage is enacted in all European laws, being defined as abolishment of an existing marriage during the life of the spouses, pronounced by a competent state body, on the grounds stipulated by the law and within the framework of a prescribed procedural process, with effect ex nunc. One of the characteristics of the current European society is a so-called "family crisis". A manifestation of this crisis is a growing number of unmarried couples and, first of all, a continuously growing number of divorces. A divorce as a social situation became at the beginning of the third millennium an ordinary and acceptable issue for an overwhelming majority of the society, being considered to be an accessible, decisive and effective method for resolving disputes and problems in a marriage. In this respect, the current European legislation also leads to the fact that only a small proportion of divorces today ends by settlement between the partners. However, it is certainly unadvisable to overestimate the importance of the institute of marriage. As regards the general opinion, the law on divorce cannot be made so complicated that it would force the spouses to remain in a non-functional and de facto nonexistent union. In general we presume that upon termination of..