Suicide law applied to love debts, cut 65,000 euro

First he squanderedthe severance pay of about 180,000 euro to comply with the demands of his 30-year younger wife, then he went into 'credit' accumulating debts of 65,000 euro. It happened to a 70-year-old man who, perhaps for the first time in his life, thought he had found love. Hence the purchase of the wedding dress and the open purse strings to prevent her and her father, who ran a bar, from suffering violence from creditors belonging to the criminal underworld.

In the list of expenses, there were also miscellaneous expenses: from a cosmetic breast operation to the redemption of pawned jewellery, from a car to the financing of a catering business. All done on the wave of the great love that had led the man, never married, childless and in analysis for some 20 years, to believe in his chance in life. Once the money ran out, however, the dream of two hearts and a hut faded. The young heart took flight, leaving the man alone with thefunding he had taken out with various companies.

Thinking if not exactly to a happy ending, at least to damage limitation was however the Court of Perugia which applied in the elderly man's favour the rules on over-indebtedness, recognising that the accumulation of debts did not dependon serious fault, but on a profound emotional vulnerability. For the Perugian judges, the application for exemption could be accepted, because the applicant met the requirements of theCrisis Code, from 'deservingness' to the absence in previous years of similar applications for access to the benefit.

"Considering that, in the present case, the proposed debt restructuring plan makes it possible to pursue the twofold aim of ensuring compliance with the principle of par condicio creditorum and of enabling the over-indebted party to satisfy its creditors within the limits of its possibilities," reads the judgment, "by making every effort to ensure the best possible satisfaction of its creditors, considering the long instalment period compatible with life expectancy, especially taking into account the actual absence of alternatives (enjoying the part of the pension treatment only, and having no other assets)".

For the sentimental claimant some debts cancelled and 107 instalments of 350 euro per month. Handling the crisis was the lawyer, appointed by the Perugia Bar Association, Angela Dell'Osso. Satisfied were the plaintiff's advocates, Michele Marzoli and Lara Greco:"Consumers, pursuant to Article 69 of the Crisis Code, cannot access the procedure if they have determined their situation of over-indebtedness through gross negligence, bad faith or fraud. In the case at hand," Marzoli and Greco emphasised, "it was therefore a question of whether the conduct of a man who, in a context of emotional fragility and without ever having denounced the woman who had swindled him, gets into debt for sentimental reasons, falls within the scope of gross negligence.