Photo Credit (Pixeles)
The strange case of a couple who married and then divorced 12 times over 43 years to exploit a legal loophole that allowed them to obtain large sums of money is currently being investigated by Vienna, Austria, police. The elderly couple is suspected of orchestrating each divorce only on paper in order to give the woman the 27,000 euros ($28,300) in severance money she was entitled to following the death of her first spouse in 1981. They used a legal loophole in Austria that permitted widows to keep their severance money as long as they were single. She was supposed to earn 2.5 times her yearly widow’s pension every two and a half years. As a result, she and her second husband would divorce around every three years so she could get the money, and they would then get married again.
When the Pension Insurance Institute denied the widow’s pension once more in May 2022, despite her 12th divorce from her second husband, the couple’s fraudulent strategy was exposed. The pair had been divorcing and then promptly getting married again every three years on average, right when the woman was set to get her severance pay, according to a straightforward investigation.
According to a Graz Criminal probe Department probe, the serial divorcees shared a marital bed, cooked together, and lived in the same home. They were a great couple who had never separated, according to their neighbors, the majority of whom were unaware of their divorce pattern. Because of their actions, a law was created to close the loophole they had been using for more than 40 years.
“Repeated marriage and subsequent divorce from the same spouse is an abuse of law if the marriage was never broken and the divorces only took place to establish a claim to a widow’s pension,” the Supreme Court ruled on March 12, 2024. Prosecutors claim that the pair, who are on trial for fraud, embezzled 326,000 euros ($341,000) in severance payments over the course of 43 years.
Fortunately, Austrian authorities did not recognize the couple’s 12th divorce, so they will be facing the charges jointly.
