Cyprus Divorce Law
Under article 11 of law 23/1990, a married person can apply to the Cypriot Family Courts for divorce if either he or she, or his or her spouse have been living in Cyprus for three months before applying to the court. This applies even if the couple were not married in Cyprus or never lived in Cyprus as a couple, and even if neither of the spouses have there permanent residence in Cyprus or have Cypriot citizenship. On the other hand, a married person cannot apply to the Cypriot Family Courts for divorce even if he or she is a Cypriot national or the couple were married in Cyprus, if neither of the spouses have been living in Cyprus for at least three months before the application for divorce was filed.
The provisions of law 23/1990, will not apply however in case the Brussels II bis regulation applies (regulation 2201/2003), that is in case your spouse is habitually resident in an EU member state. In such a case, the Cypriot Court will have jurisdiction to issue a divorce only in case the spouses’ common habitual residence was Cyprus and the plaintiff spouse still resides in Cyprus, or the plaintiff spouse has been residing in Cyprus for one year prior to the filing of the application or the plaintiff spouse is a Cypriot national and has been residing in Cyprus for at least 6 months before the application is filed.
Cyprus’s divorce law is unnecessarily complicated in the sense that there are different grounds of divorce for different sections of the population depending on their domicile, faith or denomination or whether the marriage ceremony was a civil or religious one. However, there are a number of grounds for divorce that apply to all marriages and all applicants, notably the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage due to a reason that can be attributed to the defendant spouse and makes marital cohabitation intolerable to the applicant; and the four-year separation ground which allows for a divorce to be issued irrespective of the reasons that led to marital breakdown in case the spouses have been separated for four years. In fact, virtually all divorces in Cyprus are issued for one of these two grounds of divorce, making all other grounds for divorce, which only apply to certain sections of the population, irrelevant.
A divorce can only be issued by the Family Court upon an application of one of the spouses. The applicant spouse has to appear before the court to give testimony in order to satisfy the court that the ground of divorce relied upon in the application is made out. In reality the actual procedure is to most cases merely formal, and the court will readily issue the divorce after a short uncontested testimony of the applicant confirming that the marriage has broken down and giving a very shot explanation as to what the applicant believes led to such breakdown.
The reason that may lead to the breakdown of the marriage does not need to involve any degree of culpability on behalf of any of the spouses. A no fault divorce can therefore be issued under this ground, for example because of the incompatibility of the personalities of the spouses.
In case of an uncontested application of divorce with respect to a marriage celebrated in a civil ceremony, a divorce may be issued in about six weeks. If the marriage was solemnized in the Greek Orthodox or Armenian Orthodox Churches, then the law requires that a notification be delivered to the Church before a divorce petition may be filed. This increases the time needed to get an uncontested divorce to about four to five months. In case the divorce is contested however, it may take anything up to 18 to 24 months before the court issues a divorce.
Can the divorce be appealed and what is the effect of an appeal? In case of a contested divorce issued after a hearing, the decision of the court may be appealed. In such a case the divorce decision is suspended until the end of the appeal.