He asked his wife to pay for the separation due to an extramarital affair, after – however – he had been violent with her during the marriage. This is why the Court of Cassation rejected a father’s appeal against the ruling of the Court of Appeal which had charged him with the separation, ordered the sole custody of the child to the mother and attributed the universal single allowance to the latter.
In practice, “the wife’s betrayal and the husband’s abusive and violent conduct had not had an equal impact in determining the marital crisis”, that is, the wife’s infidelity cannot be placed on the same level as the physical and moral violence committed by the husband.
The case concerns a separation initially attributed to both spouses. On appeal, however, the judges reversed everything: the responsibility for the end of the marriage was attributed only to the husband, while the child was entrusted exclusively to the mother.
Violence before the extramarital relationship
According to the judges, the man had carried out beatings, death threats, humiliations and assaults, even in front of his minor son, while the woman’s relationship with another man began only later, when the couple’s relationship was already irreparably compromised.
For this reason, the Supreme Court reiterated an important principle: infidelity cannot be put on the same level as physical and psychological violence and also confirmed the exclusive custody of the child, now a teenager, to the mother.
The Court of Cassation recalled that shared custody remains the rule, but it can be overcome when the relationship with one of the parents causes serious and lasting suffering or inconvenience to the child.
In any case, the decision confirms a clear message: domestic violence weighs decisively in separation and custody judgments, and cannot be reduced by invoking the betrayal of the other spouse.
HERE the sentence.
