BERLIN, June 18 (Xinhua) -- The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled on Tuesday that a man has to repay almost half of the grants he and his ex-wife had received from her parents in order to purchase a property.
In most other cases, the German saying "a gift is a gift," describing the irreversible nature of gifts, was quite appropriate to describe the legal situation, said presiding judge Peter Meier-Beck in Karlsruhe.
Also, it would generally not matter whether a couple was married or lived together without a marriage certificate, according to the BGH.
"Because the donor must expect the relationship to fail," the BGH noted the assumption that the joint use of the property would only end with the death of a partner was not valid.
In this case, however, Germany's highest court made an exception because the relationship had broken up just after two years. The defendant now has to repay around 47,000 euros (52,600 U.S. dollars) to his ex-wife's parents who took him to court.
The BGH stressed that the "business basis of the donation" ceased to exist, not because the relationship did not last a lifetime but because the plaintiff's daughter and the defendant had separated less than two years after receiving the grant.
Germany´s highest court made it clear that a repayment quota based on the time a couple was in a relationship was "generally out of the question."
