Marital acquest/Zugewinn

In the recent entry on the Mills-McCartney divorce arrangements, I quoted this:

This is not a case where the principle of sharing of the “marital acquest” is engaged at all.

This term was new to me. It seems a good solution for Zugewinn in German law: the property acquired by both spouses from the date of marriage on, which may be divided fifty-fifty in Germany if so agreed or in default of a contract. The situation in England is different, but still it can be necessary to talk about this amount as one of the factors.

I find acquest in the OED:

3. Law. Property gained by purchase, or gift, or otherwise than by inheritance.

Used in this sense in French and in jurisprudence, it says in the etymology.

Google reveals 112 uses, and I think it must recently have been taken up. Probably it was one of the recent big cases where the concept needed to be discussed that used it and was widely reported.
Here‘s an example:

Increasingly on divorce (and the same principles are likely to apply on the dissolution of civil partnerships) the court is interested in ascertaining what has been described as the ‘marital acquest’, that is, the assets accumulated by the parties during their marriage.

I see it was quoted in Miller v. Miller.

This does not mean that, when exercising his discretion, a judge in this country must treat all property in the same way. The statute requires the court to have regard to all the circumstances of the case. One of the circumstances is that there is a real difference, a difference of source, between (1) property acquired during the marriage otherwise than by inheritance or gift, sometimes called the marital acquest but more usually the matrimonial property, and (2) other property.

Zugewinn is usually translated as accrued gains or surplus.

MacBook Air in trashcan/MacBook Air entsorgt

It sounds very much as if Steven Levy’s wife threw his MacBook Air (he’d been lent it for review) into the trash compacter – see Gone, Without a Trace, in Newsweek.

Well, one of Beuys’ Fettecken was disposed of even when it was in full view, rather than hidden in a pile of papers like the MacBook. And another German victim was Gustav Metzger at Tate Modern:

The spokesman said: “The bag was removed the morning before we first opened. It was not put in a crusher but in a skip. It was removed but it was seen that it was damaged. That’s why the artist put another bag in its place.”

He pointed out that Metzger had not actually had to pick up new rubbish to put in his replacement bin liner but had simply found one that had already been filled and discarded. “The bags are taken from where they are found and put in the space,” said the Tate. “He doesn’t manipulate what’s in the bag.”

I think I could help.

Deutsche Fassung bei Spiegel Online.

Schadenersatz/Schadensersatz

There is a great discussion in an entry and comments in …jurabilis! on the two forms Schadenersatz and Schadensersatz. I remember puzzling about this for many years when I was teaching legal translation. We used to discuss translations into German, even if I didn’t teach them myself.

We eventually decided to use Schadensersatz all the time, but had the feeling that German lawyers preferred it without the S in the middle – there were always a public prosecutor and a judge doing some of the teaching.

The BGB has SchadenSersatz too, but was that always the case? Apparently so. The form without the S is used in Austria – surprisingly, when one considers words like Erbseinsetzung and Erbserklärung, which always remind me of Erbsensuppe.

This has even been discussed by Bastian Sick, but to little effect, as usual.

Nuremberg Zoo/Tiergarten Nürnberg

It’s just been announced that the polar bear cub Flocke will be on public view from April 9. Here is a guide for visitors – after all, the school Easter holidays end next Friday, so from March 31 there will be a few days to visit the Zoo while it’s still civilized.

I can’t get the hang of Google Maps, but if you scroll to the right here you will eventually see the zoo, marked with a blue line.


View Larger Map

It is embedded in deep forest, on a hilly and wooded site, and you can see the sandstone where the stone for Nuremberg Castle was quarried. So it’s quite a large and civilized zoo for the visitor – less so for some of the animals. A bit like a mixture between a more generously planned zoo and a crowded inner-city zoo. It would still be in Dutzendteich if Hitler hadn’t wanted that area for a parade ground. And look what happened to that.

Parking is difficult except on the civilized days I just mentioned. So do yourself a favour and get the tram from the main railway station. At the moment, it normally runs every ten minutes and takes fifteen minutes to get there, and you get out closer to the zoo than if you had to park some distance away.

See more in the continuation.

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BILD on law/BILD-BGB

BILDblog corrects some legal advice given in BILD Zeitung, quoted as follows:

Laut Artikel 195 des Bundesgesetzbuches (BGB) können Sie Fehler von Handwerkern bis zu drei Jahre nach der Dienstleistung geltend machen.

Apart from the fact that the usual period for a Werkvertrag (loosely translated as contract for work and services) is two years, the misquotation of a Paragraf (section) of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch reminds me of a howler contained in a book of standard English translations of German legal texts that is sold by a translator in Germany, where at least at one time EGBGB (Einführungsgesetz zum BGB – Introductory Act to the Civil Code) was rendered as European Civil Code (we’re still waiting for that).

(Via der winkelschreiber)