Qualification of private divorce in private international law of Germany

Abstract

The private divorce is such a dissolution of marriage that does not require the participation of the state. The examples are the Islamic talaq in its original concept still existing in some Arabic countries, the customary divorces in some countries of Sub-Saharan Africa as well as, according to the prevailing opinion in Germany, the divorce by mutual consent in the Far-East countries (Japan, Thailand, South Korea). The problem of classifying a divorce in the situation when European legal order raises the question of its recognition is generated by the fact that there is a conflict method for assessing the validity of transactions made abroad in classical private international law, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the divorce in the European legal orders is the public instrument which is performed by the state or at least by its active participation so that for the purpose of recognition it is submitted to the special procedure of recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. Private international law of Germany is a unique case of dual classification of the foreign private divorce both as a public instrument (on the ground of fiction) and as a legal transaction according to the purpose of classification. To apply the procedure of recognizing foreign private divorce in Germany, such a divorce is equated to the foreign public instrument. To determine the scope of verification, such a divorce is regarded as a legal transaction and submitted to the conflict of laws-approach, not to the approach of procedural recognition.