EUPillar OLG Nürnberg, 10.07.2014

Summary

The parties argued about maintenance obligations. The creditor lives in Poland with his mother. The debtor is divorced from the creditor's mother and lives in Paraguay while receiving a civil service pension from a German public authority. In the course of the divorce proceedings, a Polish court had rendered two decisions regarding the debtor's maintenance obligations, one on 17 August 2011 and the other on 24 August 2012. The German first instance court had declared both decisions enforceable in Germany on 11 November 2013. The debtor hat appealed against this decision, seeking to modify the commencement date of the period for which maintenance payment was due. The German second instance court held that the declaration of enforceability was governed by the Maintenance Regulation because the decisions in question had been rendered after the Maintenance Regulation had come into force in Poland and Germany on 18 June 2011. It further stated that the exequatur procedure laid down in Articles 23 et seqq. was necessary, because Art. 17 (2) Maintenance Regulation, which abolished exequatur, required that the decisions in question had been given on the basis of the 2007 Hague Maintenance Protocol. This implied that proceedings had been initiated after 18 June 2011, which was not the situation in the case at hand. Therefore, according to Art. 75 (2) lit. b) Maintenance Regulation, sections 2 and 3 of the Regulation's Chapter IV (= Art. 23 et seqq.) applied because the decisions in question fell within the scope of the Brussels I Regulation for the purposes of recognition and enforcement. The court then held that a request for a modification of the initial decision could not be made in the course of exequatur proceedings because a declaration of enforceability could only be revoked on the limited grounds laid down in Art. 24 Maintenance Regulation (Art. 34 (1) Maintenance Regulation). The court therefore upheld the first instance court's decision.