How long does the cancellation/settlement of BSM take?

From your phrased question, it is not entirely clear to us which method of settlement of joint ownership you have in mind. If you are interested in settling the joint ownership as promptly as possible, we recommend reaching an agreement with your former spouse. The only thing you should do is draw up an agreement on the settlement of joint ownership of spouses, the content of which will consist of the division of property that belonged to the joint ownership of the spouses. The agreement must be in writing only if the subject of the settlement is real estate. Otherwise, you are merely obliged to issue a written confirmation of the content of the settlement. On our part, we can draw up the settlement agreement for you within a few days, meaning the settlement will be handled very quickly.

If the subject of the settlement is real estate, it is necessary to send the agreement to the relevant land registry as well. The transfer of real estate from BSM [joint ownership] to one of the spouses takes 30 days; in the case of an accelerated filing, the period is shortened by half.

The second way to settle the joint ownership of spouses is by filing a lawsuit for the settlement of joint ownership of spouses in court. This method of settlement is more time-consuming, and the speed of handling your matter will depend on the speed of the presiding court and its workload. For this reason, it is not possible to determine exactly how long the settlement of joint ownership will take. Generally, however, you must count on it taking several months.

Another option for settlement is to wait for the fiction of settlement, which occurs after 3 years if the former spouses have not settled their property. In this case, all movable things remain in the ownership of the spouse who uses them, and movable things that neither spouse uses, as well as real estate, become the subject of fractional co-ownership.

Settling BSM through judicial means takes even several months longer than a settlement by written agreement of the spouses. However, it is not possible to answer unequivocally how long the court proceedings regarding the BSM settlement will take. The law does not establish a maximum time limit within which the BSM settlement must be performed. Everything depends on which court will be locally competent to decide in your case. If the proposal is addressed in a city where the pressure on the courts is greater, the settlement may take several months longer.

Sections 13 et seq. of Act No. 160/2015 Coll., the Civil Procedure Code, as amended (hereinafter “Civil Procedure Code”), regulate the competence of the court to act in a matter. In the case of filing a lawsuit for the settlement of joint ownership, the competent court will be determined as follows: “The general court of the defendant is locally competent for proceedings in the first instance, unless established otherwise. The general court of a natural person is the court in whose district the natural person has their permanent residence address.” This means that the lawsuit for BSM settlement must be filed at the court in whose district the permanent residence of the other spouse is located.

After the proposal for BSM settlement is delivered to the court, the court delivers it to the second participant for a statement. Only after the delivery of the statement from the second participant, who did not file the proposal, is a summons to a hearing usually delivered. The scheduling of the first hearing in the matter can thus take two to three months from the filing of the lawsuit with the court. In the proposal for settlement, we recommend specifying the participants’ addresses as accurately as possible so that the court can deliver documents to the participants on the first attempt. An extension may occur if the other ex-spouse does not collect the documents.

The length of the hearing also depends on whether you are able to agree with your ex-spouse at least partially on some items of property (although we point out that it is not possible to combine a BSM settlement agreement with a court settlement). If an expert enters the proceedings for the purpose of property valuation, the length may be extended by several months.

The lawsuit for BSM settlement must be filed within 3 years of the termination of the BSM.

Dissolution of BSM and debts Debts – liabilities are part of BSM just as property – assets are. In the sense of Section 145, Paragraph 2 of Act No. 40/1964 Coll., the Civil Code (hereinafter “CC”), “both spouses are jointly and severally entitled and obligated by legal acts concerning common matters.” This means that if a debt arises for even just one of the spouses during the marriage, both spouses will be responsible for it (with their property).

This follows from the provision of Section 147, Paragraph 1 of the CC, according to which “the claim of a creditor of only one of the spouses, which arose during the marriage, may also be satisfied during the execution of a decision from property belonging to the joint ownership of spouses.” During execution, property belonging exclusively to the spouse who incurred the debt will be used preferentially, but in the event that it is insufficient, the bailiff may also reach for common property belonging to the BSM.

The Civil Code offers, in principle, two means of protecting BSM from execution led against one of the spouses. The first of these is the so-called agreement to narrow the scope of BSM according to Section 143a of the CC, by which the spouses agree that certain things, which would otherwise fall into BSM, will be in their exclusive ownership. However, this agreement cannot exclude things that already belong to the BSM regime, i.e., were acquired before the agreement became effective. An agreement to narrow the scope of BSM has no retroactive effects; it can only apply to property that is yet to be acquired (or debts yet to arise) in the future.

The second means of protecting BSM is the right of a spouse to seek the dissolution of BSM in the event that the other spouse has obtained authorization for business activity (Section 148a, Paragraph 2 of the CC). In such a case, the court has an obligation, not just an option, to dissolve the BSM. The debts of one of the spouses may also be taken into account within the BSM settlement. According to the principle of settlement expressed in Section 150 of the CC: “each spouse is entitled to request reimbursement for what they expended from their own [property] on the common property, and is obliged to replace what was expended from the common property on their other property.” If one of the spouses had to pay their debts from property belonging to the BSM, it can be assumed that the court would take this fact into account during the settlement.