We did not reach an agreement regarding the BSM

If the spouses do not agree on the settlement of the community property, the court shall decide upon the petition of either of them. It is necessary to address a submission to the court, which is most commonly titled “Petition for the Settlement of the Community Property of Spouses.”

Since this constitutes adversary proceedings, pursuant to the provision of Section 14 of Act No. 160/2015 Coll. the Civil Dispute Procedure Code, as amended (hereinafter referred to as the “Civil Dispute Procedure Code”), the petition must be addressed to the court in whose district the natural person (i.e., the defendant, and thus the spouse who did not file the petition) has their permanent residence address. It is necessary to state in the petition a description of the factual state of the matter to the extent of – the date of conclusion of the marriage, the divorce of the marriage, or its declaration as null and void, and a description of the things that form the subject of the community property, stating their value, which is proven by an expert opinion. In addition, it is necessary to correctly formulate the petit, i.e., the motion for judgment, e.g., “from the things belonging to the community property of the parties, there is ordered into the exclusive ownership of…” subsequently listing the things that are to be acquired into the ownership of the plaintiff. Last but not least, it will be required that you sign the submission and send it in two copies to the court.

If you do not file the aforementioned petition for the settlement of the community property within 3 years from the termination of the marriage, a fiction of settlement arises pursuant to the provision of Section 149 (4) of the Civil Code: “If within three years from the dissolution of the community property of spouses it has not been settled by agreement, or if the community property of spouses was not, upon a petition filed within three years from its dissolution, settled by a court decision, it shall apply in respect of movable things that the spouses settled according to the state in which each of them uses the things from the community property for their own need, the need of their family and household exclusively as an owner. In respect of other movable things and real estate properties, it shall apply that they are in tenancy in common and that the shares of both co-owners are equal. The same shall apply mutatis mutandis to other property rights that are common to the spouses.”

We draw attention to court decisions in similar cases:

• Judgment of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic, Case File No. 5 Cdo 111/1997: “If the spouses, for a period of three years from the divorce, used the common apartment including its furnishings in such a way that each of them used designated parts of the apartment and used the rest of the apartment jointly without settling their community property by agreement or filing a petition for its settlement in court, the settlement of the movable things located in the common apartment occurred by operation of law according to the Civil Code such that each of them acquired the things used in the designated parts of the apartment into exclusive ownership and acquired the things in the jointly used parts of the apartment into tenancy in common.”

• Judgment of the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic, Case File No. 4 Cz 37/68: “The circumstance that each of the divorced spouses retained certain things from the common property after the divorce of the marriage (even if of approximately equal value) does not, without more, justify the conclusion that an agreement on the settlement of the community property was concluded between them.”

• Judgment of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic, Case File No. 2 Cdo 83/1998: “An agreement on the settlement of the community property of spouses must concern all property constituting the community property that existed at the time of the dissolution of this community property.”