In our practice, we encounter everything from relatively straightforward uncontested divorces to proceedings in which family breakdown intersects with companies, real estate, immigration law, imprisonment or financial relationships built up over many years of living together.
There is therefore no single model of family conflict in Madrid. Nor is this intended as a sociological description of the city. The situations described below simply reflect some of the matters that appear with particular relevance in our professional practice.
In many cases, the main difficulty lies precisely in identifying which issues genuinely belong within the family proceedings and which require an additional legal response.
Family law in Madrid: diversity and judicial practice
Madrid is an exceptionally diverse social and territorial environment. Our practice includes matters arising in Madrid itself as well as in other municipalities throughout the Community of Madrid, with a significant number of clients also coming from the northern part of the metropolitan area.
That diversity is reflected in family proceedings: families with very different financial circumstances, simple or complex assets, Spanish and international couples, and disputes that may simultaneously involve several areas of law.
At the same time, continued experience before Madrid’s specialised family courts makes it possible to understand their judicial practice and to assess more precisely the range within which particular decisions may reasonably fall.
This can be particularly relevant in financial matters: child maintenance, spousal maintenance, children’s expenses, use of the family home and other financial consequences of separation or divorce.
Every decision depends on the circumstances of the individual case and the assessment of the court. Previous experience can never guarantee an outcome. It can, however, help distinguish between what may legally be requested and what, considering the facts and judicial practice, may reasonably be expected.
Knowing the law tells us what can be requested. Knowing the practice helps us assess what may reasonably be expected.
Divorce when the other spouse cannot be located
Among the matters we handle in Madrid are cases involving people who have had no contact with their spouse for many years.
Sometimes they genuinely do not know where the other person lives. In other cases, attempts to locate the spouse are unsuccessful or persistent difficulties arise when trying to serve the proceedings.
This does not, in itself, prevent a person from seeking a divorce.
Spanish procedural law provides mechanisms for attempting to locate the other party and serving proceedings with the legally required safeguards. Where the defendant nevertheless fails to appear, the proceedings may continue in the circumstances and under the conditions established by procedural law.
Years without contact between spouses do not make the marriage legally impossible to dissolve.
Similar difficulties in locating another party can also arise in proceedings to modify existing family measures, claims concerning children or enforcement of previous court decisions.
Family law and imprisonment
We have also handled family matters in which one member of the couple is, or has previously been, deprived of liberty.
Imprisonment can profoundly alter existing family arrangements, relationships with children, possibilities for family contact and the practical operation of measures previously established by a court.
Subsequent changes in the person’s circumstances may make it necessary to reconsider those arrangements, particularly where contact with children is to be gradually restored or extended following a prolonged period of separation.
These matters require particular care. Decisions concerning children must respond to their best interests and to the family’s circumstances at the relevant time. A change in a person’s penitentiary situation does not automatically justify a corresponding change in family measures.
Where both areas are involved, our family law and prison law practice enables us to consider each legal framework separately and assess how they may interact in the particular family situation.
When divorce also involves a business
In Madrid we also encounter divorces in which the spouses share business interests or maintain financial relationships connected with a professional or commercial activity.
They may both be shareholders in the same company, operate a business together, work in a business controlled by one of them, have provided personal guarantees, or maintain credits and obligations arising from their commercial activities.
In these situations, the divorce judgment ends the marriage but does not necessarily end the financial relationships between the former spouses.
Ending a marriage does not automatically terminate a company, a guarantee, a debt or a business relationship.
The family law strategy may therefore need to be coordinated with corporate, contractual and property issues that will continue to exist after the marriage has ended.
Division of matrimonial property and complex assets
Divorce does not necessarily result in the immediate division of matrimonial property.
We handle cases in which the Spanish matrimonial property regime known as sociedad de gananciales has remained unliquidated for years and must be dealt with long after the former spouses have established entirely separate personal lives.
The situation can become more complex where there are several properties, assets located in different parts of Spain, outstanding loans, companies, investments or other financial relationships that must be reconstructed retrospectively.
In these cases, identifying the assets is only the beginning. It may also be necessary to establish their origin, ownership, financing and charges, as well as payments made after separation and financial dealings between the former spouses.
A judgment may have ended the marriage many years earlier while leaving a property relationship that still needs to be finally resolved.
When there is no marriage to liquidate
The absence of marriage does not necessarily make the breakdown of a relationship legally simpler.
Among the matters we handle are couples who lived together for many years without marrying and, in some cases, without formally registering as a pareja de hecho or registered partnership.
During that relationship, numerous financial connections may have developed: jointly owned property, vehicles paid for by one person and used by the other, loans, guarantees, transfers of money, joint investments, debts or direct or indirect involvement in a business.
Where there are children, the parental measures concerning them constitute a separate legal issue that must also be regulated according to their needs and best interests.
The personal relationship may be one. The legal relationships created during it may be many.
Unlike certain financial consequences of marriage, there is not necessarily a single legal framework capable of resolving everything that occurred during the relationship.
It may be necessary to deal separately with jointly owned property, a loan, a guarantee, a claim between the former partners, a corporate relationship or another obligation that continues after the relationship itself has ended.
The task is therefore to identify which legal relationships remain open and determine the appropriate legal mechanism for each of them.
International families and the Spanish Civil Registry
International elements arise with particular frequency in our Madrid family law practice.
Marriages celebrated outside Spain, divorces obtained in other countries, spouses living in different States or foreign documentation may require family proceedings to be coordinated with subsequent or parallel civil registry procedures.
In some matters, this also involves proceedings before Spain’s Registro Civil Central (Central Civil Registry).
Resolving a family matter legally and ensuring that it is properly reflected in the Spanish civil registry system are not necessarily the same procedure, nor do they necessarily progress at the same pace. Practical experience therefore makes it advisable to identify from the outset what documentation will be required and to take account of the time that registry procedures may involve.
Our practice has also included less usual situations, such as marriage procedures in which one of the prospective spouses is outside Spain and specific legal mechanisms must be considered in order for the marriage to take place.
In international family matters, resolving the underlying family issue correctly may therefore also require identifying its documentary and civil registry consequences.
Marriage, cohabitation, housing and immigration law
Spanish family law and immigration law do not necessarily attach the same legal significance to every aspect of a relationship.
Under Spanish civil law, the existence of a marriage does not depend on the spouses permanently following a particular model of day-to-day cohabitation. In immigration law, however, particular procedures may require evidence of additional circumstances concerning the effective family relationship, cohabitation, housing, available resources or the composition of the family unit.
Madrid also introduces an important practical factor: access to housing.
In some matters we encounter marriages or families whose relationship is stable but whose residential arrangements do not correspond to the conventional model of a single shared home. Housing costs may result in one member of the family temporarily living in a room, with relatives or at a different address.
This residential dispersion does not necessarily imply geographical separation or the disappearance of family life. Where immigration proceedings are involved, however, it may create additional evidential or administrative difficulties that must be assessed under the particular legal regime applicable to the case.
The issue can become more complex in family reunification proceedings. Housing requirements and other administrative considerations are not necessarily the same where the person seeking reunification wishes to bring a spouse to Spain as where the family unit also includes children or other relatives.
In these situations, marriage, housing and immigration law cannot always be analysed independently. Their interaction may be central to the case.
Modification of family measures: when circumstances change
Measures established in divorce proceedings or proceedings concerning children respond to a particular set of circumstances. Those circumstances may change over time.
Children grow older and their needs change. Parents move home, their working arrangements change, new financial circumstances arise and forms of family organisation that once worked may cease to be appropriate.
Proceedings for the modification of existing family measures form a significant part of our family law practice in Madrid.
The issue is not simply whether something has changed, but whether that change has sufficient legal significance and what new arrangements are appropriate in the family’s current circumstances.
Family law in Madrid
From our Madrid office, we advise and represent clients in family and matrimonial proceedings in Madrid itself and in other municipalities throughout the Community of Madrid.
Our practice includes, among other matters:
- uncontested and contested divorce;
- divorce where one spouse cannot initially be located;
- parental measures for unmarried parents;
- child custody and parenting arrangements;
- child maintenance and spousal maintenance;
- modification of existing family measures;
- enforcement of judgments and court-approved agreements;
- use of the family home;
- division and liquidation of matrimonial property;
- division of jointly owned property and termination of co-ownership;
- relationship breakdown involving business interests or complex assets;
- family matters involving imprisonment;
- international family matters and Civil Registry procedures;
- matters involving both family and immigration law.
The complexity of a family matter does not depend only on the level of conflict between the people involved. It may also arise from the number of legal relationships that remain unresolved after the relationship ends.
EBAN Abogados | Madrid
A divorce can end a marriage. A separation can end a relationship.
Neither necessarily brings to an end every legal relationship that has developed around the family.
Identifying those relationships correctly is the first step towards resolving them.
