Bad news from the Court of Cassation for the unfaithful spouse: She messaged another man and lost her alimony

A couple experiencing severe incompatibility filed for divorce against each other. The Family Court found both parties, who were accused of infidelity, equally at fault. The court rejected the woman's request for alimony and compensation. 

The defendant-counter-plaintiff woman appealed the decision. The Regional Court of Justice ruled that the man was more at fault and ordered that a certain amount of alimony and compensation be paid in favor of the woman. When the plaintiff-counter-defendant husband appealed the decision, the 2nd Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation intervened. In the precedent-setting decision, it was reiterated that the woman sending a message to another man while married proved infidelity. 

The decision stated the following: 

"It is established by the evidence in the file and witness statements that the event that caused the de facto separation between the parties was a message sent from the defendant-counter-plaintiff woman's phone to another man, which demonstrates the woman's infidelity.

The plaintiff-counter-defendant man also has a hotel record with another woman before the woman's joined divorce case. One of the witnesses, the defendant-counter-plaintiff woman's mother, stated that the parties were engaged for one year, and that her daughter saw the environment she would live in and married knowing she would live in the family apartment building.

The event that caused the de facto separation between the parties was the message sent from the woman's phone to another man, and when evaluated together with the statement of the woman's mother, it was not appropriate for the Regional Court of Justice to add the faults of 'not providing a morally independent residence and remaining silent to family interference' to the plaintiff-counter-defendant man.

For this reason, according to the other faulty behaviors of the parties, it must be accepted that they are equally at fault in the events that caused the divorce. It was not correct to accept the man as heavily at fault as a result of an erroneous evaluation. In order to award pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages as a result of a divorce, the party liable for compensation must be at fault, and the spouse requesting compensation must be faultless or less at fault than the other. The Regional Court of Justice's acceptance that the plaintiff-counter-defendant man was more at fault than the defendant-counter-plaintiff woman, and the awarding of pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages in favor of the woman based on this erroneous fault determination, was inaccurate and required reversal." 

News Source: İHA