Divorce in Germany: The Trennungsjahr, Versorgungsausgleich and How the Process Works

German divorce law runs on a single structural idea that surprises most people arriving from a fault-based or petition-driven system: the marriage does not end because one spouse behaves badly, and it does not end quickly. It ends because the couple has lived apart for a defined period, and that period is the actual gatekeeper of the whole process.

This page works through how a divorce is actually obtained under §§ 1565 and 1566 BGB, what counts as living apart under § 1567 BGB, who has to be represented by a lawyer, what the court decides alongside the divorce itself (above all the automatic pension split, the Versorgungsausgleich), and the realistic sequence from filing to decree.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

No fault, one ground: the Zerrüttungsprinzip

Germany abolished fault-based divorce with the 1977 reform of marriage law. Before that, a spouse generally had to prove the other was at fault, for example through adultery or desertion, to obtain a divorce. That system is gone.

The current law rests on what is usually called the Zerrüttungsprinzip, the breakdown principle. § 1565 Abs. 1 BGB states it directly: a marriage can be divorced if it has failed, and it has failed if the spouses' shared life no longer exists and cannot be expected to be restored. Nothing in that test asks who caused the breakdown.

That does not mean conduct is legally irrelevant to every part of a divorce. It can still be weighed in spousal maintenance in narrow circumstances, and it can factor into the hardship clause discussed later on this page. But it plays no role in the basic question of whether the marriage gets dissolved at all.

The Trennungsjahr: why one year decides almost everything

§ 1565 Abs. 2 BGB blocks a divorce before the spouses have lived apart for a year, unless continuing the marriage would be an unreasonable hardship for the applicant because of the other spouse's conduct. That exception is read narrowly by German courts and is not a route around the waiting period for an ordinary unhappy marriage; it is reserved for serious situations such as violence.

Once a year of separation has run, § 1566 Abs. 1 BGB creates an irrebuttable presumption that the marriage has failed, provided both spouses apply for the divorce, or one applies and the other consents. Irrebuttable means exactly what it says: nobody can argue in court that the marriage has not really failed. The passage of time and the joint request or consent is conclusive proof by itself, and the judge does not reopen the question of whether the relationship could still work.

If one spouse wants a divorce after a year but the other does not consent, the case does not automatically fail. It simply moves to the three-year mark. § 1566 Abs. 2 BGB creates the same irrebuttable presumption of failure after three years of separation, with no consent requirement at all. In practice, this means a divorce in Germany is always obtainable eventually, but a spouse who refuses to consent can extend a contested case from about a year to about three.

Between one and three years without consent, a court can still grant a divorce, but only if the applicant can actually demonstrate the marriage has failed under the general § 1565 Abs. 1 BGB test, without the benefit of the presumption. That is a harder case to bring and is comparatively rare in practice.

Living apart: what § 1567 BGB actually requires

The single fact that surprises most people is that the Trennungsjahr does not require moving to a separate address. § 1567 Abs. 1 BGB defines living apart (Getrenntleben) as the absence of a shared household between the spouses, combined with one spouse recognisably no longer wanting to maintain the shared marital life.

The statute goes further in its second sentence: the shared household is also considered to no longer exist where the spouses live separately from each other inside the same marital home. German practice sometimes calls this separation "von Tisch und Bett", separated table and bed, meaning the couple stops cooking, eating, doing laundry, managing money and sleeping together as a shared household, even while both names remain on the same lease or the same front door.

This matters enormously in a country with a tight and expensive housing market, where moving out immediately is often not realistic. A couple can start the Trennungsjahr clock the day they genuinely divide the household, not the day one of them signs a new tenancy.

§ 1567 Abs. 2 BGB adds a separate protection: a short period of living together again in an attempt at reconciliation does not interrupt or restart the one-year or three-year clock under § 1566 BGB. A failed attempt to reconcile is not punished by resetting the count to zero, which is meant to encourage couples to try rather than to lock in an early, permanent split out of fear of losing time.

Worked example. A couple stops sharing a bedroom, cooking together and combined finances on 3 March 2025, while continuing to live in the same rented flat because neither can afford to move out immediately. Both later agree the marriage is over. Their Trennungsjahr runs from 3 March 2025, not from whatever later date one of them actually relocates, and the earliest the petition can be filed with both consenting is on or shortly after 3 March 2026.

Who has to be represented by a lawyer

§ 114 Abs. 1 FamFG requires spouses in Ehesachen, which include divorce, to be represented by a Rechtsanwalt before the Familiengericht and the Oberlandesgericht. A person cannot simply walk in and file their own divorce petition without a lawyer.

There is a specific, narrower exception in § 114 Abs. 4 Nr. 3 FamFG: consenting to a divorce, withdrawing a divorce petition, and revoking consent to a divorce do not themselves require representation. This is the provision that makes the common einvernehmliche Scheidung (an uncontested, by-consent divorce) workable with a single lawyer. One spouse retains a lawyer, who drafts and files the petition. The other spouse, if they agree with the divorce and are not asking the court to decide anything separately, can simply consent in the proceeding without hiring their own lawyer.

That arrangement changes the moment the other spouse wants the court to decide something in their own interest, for example a separate application on maintenance or on the division of household goods. At that point that spouse generally needs their own legal representation for that application, even inside an otherwise cooperative divorce.

The Verbund: what the court decides together with the divorce

German divorce procedure bundles a defined set of related matters together with the divorce itself, called the Verbund, so they are decided in a single proceeding rather than as separate lawsuits. § 137 Abs. 1 FamFG states the general rule: divorce and the associated Folgesachen (follow-on matters) are argued and decided together.

The Versorgungsausgleich, the pension split discussed below, is the one Folgesache that is always part of the Verbund without either spouse needing to apply for it. Other matters, including child maintenance, spousal maintenance, parental responsibility, contact and the marital home, only enter the Verbund if a spouse actively applies to have them decided there.

Anything not brought into the Verbund, such as the division of marital property under the Zugewinnausgleich, generally has to be pursued as its own separate matter, on its own timeline, rather than automatically resolved by the divorce decree. See equalisation of gains for how that asset-division process works, spousal maintenance for support after separation and after divorce, and custody for parental responsibility.

Versorgungsausgleich: splitting the pension rights built up during the marriage

The Versorgungsausgleich is the part of a German divorce with no close equivalent in many other legal systems, and it happens whether or not either spouse asks for it. § 1 VersAusglG sets the governing principle: the portions of pension rights each spouse built up during the marriage, the Ehezeitanteile, are divided equally between them.

The relevant period, the Ehezeit, is defined by § 3 Abs. 1 VersAusglG as running from the first day of the month the marriage was concluded through the last day of the month before the divorce petition was served on the other spouse. Pension rights built up before the marriage or after that cutoff are not touched.

The mechanism used is usually internal division, or interne Teilung, under § 10 VersAusglG. Rather than moving money between spouses directly, the family court instructs each pension provider, whether that is the statutory Deutsche Rentenversicherung, an occupational scheme or a civil servant pension, to create an independent entitlement for the other spouse equal to half of what was earned during the marriage within that specific scheme, while reducing the original holder's entitlement by the same amount. Each pension right is handled this way, scheme by scheme.

Worked example. During a marriage, one spouse built up statutory pension rights that would pay out €600 a month at retirement, entirely from the Ehezeit. The other spouse, who worked part time to care for children, built up €200 a month over the same period. Under the Halbteilung principle, each entitlement is split in half within its own scheme: €300 moves from the first spouse's statutory pension account to an independent entitlement for the second spouse, and €100 moves from the second spouse's account to an independent entitlement for the first spouse. The result is that each spouse ends up with a projected €400 a month in statutory pension income from these Ehezeit portions, which is the mathematical midpoint of what they each built up individually. Real cases are rarely this simple, since most people have more than one pension entitlement, for example a statutory pension plus a company scheme, each divided separately by its own provider.

Two situations take the Versorgungsausgleich out of the automatic default. § 3 Abs. 3 VersAusglG provides that for a marriage lasting three years or less, measured by the Ehezeit definition above, the equalisation only happens if one spouse actually applies for it; it is not automatic for short marriages. Separately, § 6 VersAusglG allows the spouses to agree to exclude or limit the Versorgungsausgleich entirely or in part by their own agreement, and § 7 VersAusglG requires that agreement to be in notarial form if it is made independently of a marriage contract, or in the form required for a marriage contract under § 1410 BGB if it is included in one.

A family court can still review such an agreement for fairness at the point of divorce, so excluding the Versorgungsausgleich by contract is not automatically the final word if the resulting outcome would be grossly one-sided. This is a specialist area where individual drafting advice matters far more than a general description of the rule.

The hardship clause and children

§ 1568 BGB allows a court to decline a divorce, even though the marriage has objectively failed, in two narrow situations. The first is where maintaining the marriage is, for special reasons, exceptionally necessary in the interests of the couple's minor children. The second is where the divorce would be an exceptionally severe hardship for the spouse opposing it, because of extraordinary circumstances, to the point that keeping the marriage intact is exceptionally warranted even weighing the applicant's own interests.

Both branches of § 1568 BGB are applied narrowly and are the exception rather than a routine outcome; the presence of minor children in a marriage does not by itself delay or block a divorce that otherwise satisfies §§ 1565 and 1566 BGB. Custody, contact and child maintenance are addressed on their own, separate pages: see custody and the Düsseldorfer Tabelle child support tables.

Where the case is heard

A German divorce is not decided by a standalone family court. § 23b GVG establishes the Familiengericht as a division formed within the Amtsgericht, the local court, rather than a separate court structure. § 121 FamFG defines Ehesachen, including divorce proceedings, as the category of case that division handles. In practice the petition is filed with the Familiengericht at the Amtsgericht that has jurisdiction, typically based on where the spouses or any joint minor children last lived together.

Costs, maintenance and property, briefly

Three matters that regularly come up alongside a divorce are each detailed on their own page, and are only summarised here.

Court and lawyer fees are calculated from a Verfahrenswert (procedural value) that reflects both spouses' income and the value of the Versorgungsausgleich, not a flat fee. See divorce costs for how that figure is built up.

Maintenance during separation, Trennungsunterhalt, and maintenance after the divorce, nachehelicher Unterhalt, follow different rules under different sections of the BGB and are not automatic in every case. See spousal maintenance.

Marital property is not divided by the divorce court automatically unless a spouse brings it into the Verbund. The Zugewinnausgleich compares what each spouse had at the start and end of the marriage. See equalisation of gains.

The practical sequence

The realistic path runs roughly as follows, though the actual duration of any individual case depends on the court's workload, whether the Versorgungsausgleich providers respond promptly, and whether the spouses agree on the Folgesachen or contest them.

First, the couple separates in fact, in the § 1567 BGB sense described above, whether or not they physically move apart. Second, once a year of separation has passed (or, in a genuine hardship case, without waiting for that year), the spouse seeking the divorce, through their lawyer, files the petition with the Familiengericht. Third, the court serves the petition on the other spouse, which is also the date that fixes the end of the Ehezeit for the Versorgungsausgleich. Fourth, the court requests each pension provider's calculation of the Ehezeit pension entitlements, which is frequently the slowest step in an otherwise uncontested case. Fifth, the court holds a hearing, and where the divorce and all Verbund matters are uncontested, a single hearing is often enough. Sixth, the court issues the divorce decree, which becomes final once any appeal period has run or has been waived.

No stage of that sequence has a fixed length, and this page does not estimate one. An einvernehmliche Scheidung with a cooperative pension provider response is generally faster than a contested case with disputed Folgesachen, but neither this page nor any lawyer can promise a specific number of months for an individual matter.