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Divorced couple’s mansion split by brick wall

A divorced couple in Russia have been ordered to construct a brick wall inside their mansion.

This unusual ruling was made when the local family court declared that the couple’s wealth should be divided equally. The biggest asset was their luxury home valued at around £2 million in Moscow’s prestigious Rublyovka suburb.

However, instead of ordering the divorcing couple to sell it and divide the profit equally, the court said a brick wall should be constructed down the middle so both parties would own half of the property.

Unsurprisingly, this decision has already caused major problems. The wife claims the wall was hastily built before she was able to install a second staircase. This means the 45 year-old is unable to get to her bedroom as the only stairs in the house are on her ex-husband’s side.

She had asked the court for a delay until March 2017 as she “had no money to build it right immediately”. Although her request was granted, the wall was constructed anyway. Speaking to local media, the woman said she was eating breakfast with her son when “builders came into the house, dragging in blocks of concrete”. There was also a court official present with a statement which said the wife’s staircase should have already been built by the time they arrived. Although she showed the official a document outlining the court’s decision to delay, she claimed he “just looked blank, saying that [her] former husband was free to do anything he wanted in his half of the house”.

In fact, the wall went up so quickly that a friend of the wife’s had to be rescued by emergency services because she was trapped upstairs.

Before the court battle began, the wife did not want to divorce even though she claimed her husband had been unfaithful to her. She said that she still loved him and “thought it would be wrong to split and leave [their] two children without both parents”. But her husband had other ideas and filed for divorce.

She described the entire ordeal as “some kind of weird farce”.

The blog team at Stowe is a group of writers based across our family law offices who share their advice on the wellbeing and emotional aspects of divorce or separation from personal experience. As well as pieces from our family law solicitors, guest contributors also regularly contribute to share their knowledge.

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