According to the resolutions of the Supreme Court of May 14, 2024 (III CZP 38/23), in the proceedings on the division of joint property after the termination of the community of property between spouses (Article 567 § 1 and 3 in connection with Article 684 of the Code of Civil Procedure), the court also decides ex officio on claims arising from the unjustified disposal of joint property by one of the spouses for their own needs before the termination of the community of property.
In the case in question, the spouses ran a joint household and had joint bank accounts during the duration of the community of property. The husband ran a business, from which they derived income for the needs of the household. The wife, on the other hand, mainly took care of the house and children, and was not professionally employed. In the first years of the company’s operation, she helped run the office, but did not manage it and was not employed by her husband.
The husband did not prove how he spent the funds constituting the company’s income for the years 2010-2013 in the amount of PLN 12,575,215.89, and the District Court basically did not comment on this matter. According to the Court of Second Instance, the burden of proof as to the manner of using the funds from the joint property rests on the spouse who has these funds at their disposal, i.e. in this case J.K., as the manager of the company. The size of this amount was such that he could not stop at a cursory explanation that these funds were used during the duration of the joint property, but he should have been required to settle them in detail. According to the District Court, most of these funds were misappropriated by the participant in the proceedings. It does not matter whether he hid them or used them, because since their fate is unknown, there is no possibility of physically including them in the actual division, but only their value can be settled. For the benefit of the participant in the proceedings, it can be assumed by way of a factual presumption that out of the company’s income for the years 2010-2013 amounting to PLN 12,575,215.89, he spent PLN 459,200 on maintaining the family, and thus PLN 12,116,015.89 remained to be settled with the applicant.
Ultimately, the District Court ordered the husband to pay the wife the amount of PLN 4,399,505.91 as a settlement of the joint property, payable within three months from the date of the finality of the decision with statutory default interest.