The in absentia granding of the divorce against the applicant who was supposedly of an unknown residence violates the right to a fair trial
JUDGMENT
Schmidt v. Latvia 27.04.2017 (no. 22493/05)
SUMMARY
Access to court. Divorce proceedings. In absentia. Violation of a fair trial. The case concerns the applicant’s complaint about breaches of divorce proceedings. Based on Article 6 § 1 (right to a trial and access to court), she claimed that she had been unaware of the divorce proceedings and had been deprived of the right to participate because she was summoned to a place where she did not live anymore. The Court upheld this claim, in breach of Article 6 § 1 of the ECHR.
PROVISION
Article 6 par. 1
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Heide Lydia Friedel Schmidt, is a German national who was born in 1938 and lives in Hamburg (Germany). The case concerned her complaint about the unfairness of divorce
proceedings.
She married A.S., a Latvian national, in 1970 and before their separation in 1999/2000, they lived in apartments in both Hamburg and Riga. In 2003 A.S. brought divorce proceedings before the Latvian courts. Ms Schmidt, who no longer lived in Latvia, was notified of the proceedings via a summons that was sent to her last known place of residence, namely the apartment in Riga she used to share with her husband and in which he still lived. Unable to reach Ms Schmidt and told by A.S. that he was unaware of his spouse’s place of residence, the courts published two notifications in the Official Gazette. Ruling in her absence, the courts then granted the divorce in 2004. A.S. passed away soon after and, according to Ms Schmidt, she only learned about the divorce when going to Riga to attend his funeral. Her request for supervisory review of the judgment in which the divorce was granted was dismissed in 2005; the Senate of the Supreme Court concluded that the first-instance court’s actions had been compatible with the requirements of the Civil Procedure Law.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
Relying on Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing and access to court), Ms Schmidt claimed that, unaware of the divorce proceedings, she had been deprived of the right to take part in those
proceedings as well as of other procedural rights. She contests in particular her ex-husband’s claim that he had not known her new place of residence.
Violation of Article 6 § 1
Just satisfaction: EUR 5,000 (non-pecuniary damage) and EUR 1,000 (costs and expenses)
