Recht oder Unrecht? Teil 1

Michael Morcom

by Michael Morcom

Story
2010 – 2013

I am writing this article on behalf of all those people like me who have not been able to receive justice from the Austrian Justice System.

I lived in Austria for three and a half years. In that time, I lived with my life partner and was able to find work as a Native English Teacher (admittedly at half the rate of an Austrian national). My life partner and I decided to get a house together. I could not help her at the beginning as I did not have very much money as I was awaiting the finalisation of my divorce. Throughout this time, I was paying rent to my partner which worked out at just over a third of my monthly earnings. With the rest of my earnings I could do what I liked although I did contribute towards the household shopping as and when I could.

Two years after living with her, she was starting to run out of money with the house building and so I used some of my life savings and took out a loan from an Austrian Bank for over €10000 – it helped in the short-term but put my bank account into the red for the first time in my life. I was in love and so it was just something that I wanted to do. A few months later my divorce settlement came through and so I was able to help complete the house a bit more and then finally, my father (102) died and I received some inheritance money. The house was completed finally but there was always more she wanted to do – she could not just wait until we had saved up some money.

I was beginning to feel used and especially as my name was not on the deeds of the house – instead, she had promised me on a few occasions that she would pay me back what she could afford if our relationship finished. After 3 years, despite me having contributed half the mortgage for the new house for a year, she was finding it difficult to live. My bank account was healthy again despite having lost a lot of my savings and I was able to survive so long as I continued to live with her – I was really not happy at having been stripped of most of my money and so I started looking for better paid jobs to get us in a better position. I was only able to find overseas jobs which would pay better. I landed a very well-paid job which would have been earning more than her and came complete with a house that was paid for and utilities paid for – the problem was that this job was in Saudi Arabia. I would not be allowed to visit her more than 2 or 3 times a year and as we were not married she would not be able to stay with me if she visited me. I would still be paying her half the mortgage and half the utilities. I accepted the job and was within a week of accepting the job by attending a medical in London, but I decided that this was not the reason I had left the UK and leave my wife and family. I ended the relationship after three and a half years and said that I could no longer live like this.

She threw me out almost immediately and did not allow me any more access to the property to collect my possessions and so some of my most personal possessions remained. She was not prepared to discuss a settlement or compensation for any money I had spent on the property,

© Michael Morcom 2020-11-16

Hashtags