I was surprised that the Times yesterday reported on a case decided this week by the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof).

It looks as if there is some feeling that if German courts allow repayments of in-laws’ gifts when their child divorces, then this may be done in the UK too.

However, the device used would have to be different.

Here’s the BGH press release in German – the judgment isn’t available yet.

The important part of the judgment was that it is now easier for parents-in-law to obtain the return of gifts given to the married couple

The couple had been living together since 1990 and got married in 1997. They had one child before the marriage and one after. In 1996 the son-in-law bought a flat by auction – I don’t know what the full price was, but the parents-in-law gave him DM 58,000 and he transferred DM 49,000 to the court.

The couple separated in 2002 and when they got divorced in 2004 they excluded the usual division of marital property. The flat remained in the sole name of the husband.

The parents-in-law sued for return of the money, and went all the way to the BGH, where they were successful, at least insofar as the court changed its previous line of decisions – it said that where parents-in-law give presents related to the marriage, they do this on the basis that the marriage will continue. In the present case, the divorce is effectively a frustration of the contract of gift/donation (Wegfall der Geschäftsgrundlage). The court can now, at least partly, reverse the transaction. The case was sent back to the court below (Berlin Higher Regional Court – Kammergericht Berlin) for a new decision. It looks as if not all the money will be repaid, since the daughter did live in the matrimonial home for some years and enjoyed some of the gift.

In German law, Schenkung (gift/donation) is one of the types of contract. The court has now decided to treat the parents-in-law’s payment as this kind of contract. Previously, it had a term for gifts from one spouse to another, unbenannte Zuwendung (literally, unnamed gift – Romain calls it gift between spouses), and the parents-in-law’s gift was treated as analogous to this. And if the couple lived in the marital property regime of community of acquisitions (Zugewinngemeinschaft), the gift could not be reclaimed.

So what did The Times do with this? It really wasn’t too bad. It did move the court from Karlsruhe to Berlin. It referred to a house and called the money a ‘down payment’ (which may be true – some of the report must have come from someone who was in court – AFP report was the real source). The header ‘German ordered to repay house deposit to his in-laws after divorce’ is a bit broad: he hasn’t yet been ordered, because the lower court is to do any ordering, and it doesn’t look as if he’ll have to repay the whole thing.

Via John Bolch at Family Lore.

Here are comments I have either removed from the blog or failed to approve (links removed)/
Folgende Kommentare wurden entweder entfernt oder nicht zugelassen (Links entfernt):

On German courts using the English language:

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On Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage:

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On European Union Law:

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On German bread:

what dose it looks like

More unexpected birds being forced to go to the Pegnitz:

And here is their devious relative – usual view of little grebe:

Occasional glimpse:

The term McKenzie friend has been discussed here before – here’s the first entry, and later I quoted the OED definition, and finally the original McKenzie friend commented – see PDF.

On Language Log, Mark Liberman has now found a McKenzie friend who seems more dangerous to the understanding of language than many a judge.

The syntax, and I am the judge in 1988 who wrote the mathematical interface on all 5,000 languages proving that language is a linear equation in algebra certifying that all words have 900 definitions through this mathematical algebraic formula and over the course of the past 21 years have developed an accuracy level in the syntaxing of language sentence structure to prove the correct sentence structure communication syntax language is required in a court system.

There is more.

LATER NOTE: see the comments at Language Log on David Wynn Miller, also mentioned in Wikipedia.

This duck is on the Rednitz, which isn’t frozen over, with a lot of others, all from a small lake now frozen. I hadn’t been there for a while so I had missed this one (the female has disappeared, I gather). The Waldmannsweiher did originally have a kingfisher at one end, but it may have gone since the Deutsche Bahn decimated the trees. The ducks are still there, though – although the wood ducks I haven’t seen for a long time.

Günther Oettinger is Germany’s new European Commissioner and he thinks we should all understand English. He doesn’t seem able to pronounce the English speech someone has written for him, though: video.

While I’m at it, for those who speak German, here is the interpreter for La Toya Jackson at the Semper Opernball (rumour has it that the organizers advertised on a website for someone speaking English who had to live in Saxony).

LATER NOTE: I was asked whether I thought people like Oettinger and Westerwelle ought to have interpreters. On reflection, I think the little I have seen of Westerwelle indicated that he was using his own words (such as they were) and was comprehensible. On the basis of one excerpt, a borderline case but possibly OK. Not all listeners notice language mistakes as long as they can follow the content. Oettinger’s now famous video, however, is incomprehensible in large parts, because the intonation is all wrong – incomprehensible to both native and non-native speakers, I think. It was also embarrassing to see him looking at his text so often. There is another video of him first being presented at the EU, where he speaks much better, and then fields questions in German. I think on the evidence of the incomprehensible speech, he definitely needs an interpreter.

(Via Im Namen des Volkers)