According to the Article 174 of Turkish Civil Code, “The spouse who is not faulty or have less fault and whose current or expected benefits are damaged as a result of divorce may seek an appropriate financial compensation from faulty spouse.
The spouse whose personal rights are violated because of the events that led to divorce, may request the payment of an appropriate amount of money as non-pecuniary damages.”
In order to request the pecuniary damages:
- a. The current or expected benefits of the spouse who requests pecuniary damages shall be damaged because of the divorce;
- b. The spouse who asks for pecuniary damage shall not be faulty or shall have less fault;
- c. The other spouse shall be faulty.
If other spouse is not faulty the court cannot decide pecuniary damages. In case of equal fault, the court shall reject the request of pecuniary damages. The court cannot decide pecuniary damages to be paid by itself, request of the spouse is required. The pecuniary damages are secondary consequence of divorce; therefore, the final divorce verdict is necessary for deciding pecuniary damages.
In case of one of the spouse requests pecuniary damages, the court will decide by determining the financial conditions and defect rate of the spouses.
In order to the court to decide non-pecuniary damages:
- The personal rights of a spouse who asks for non-pecuniary damages shall be violated because of the events that led to divorce,
- The spouse who requests non-pecuniary damages shall not be faulty of shall have less fault. With the new Turkish Civil Code, it is not necessary the spouse seeking for non-pecuniary damages to be completely faultless. It is enough that the spouse seeking for non-pecuniary damages has fewer faults than other spouse.
Insult, violence, infidelity, not to have sexual relations are considered as causes of non-pecuniary damages by Supreme Court ,but the causes are not limited to these written ones..
2nd Circuit of Turkish Supreme Court stated in its decision dated 28.01.2009, docket no 2008/19753 and decision no 2009/944 that, “This spouse at least has lost the other spouse’s financial support as a result of the divorce. Therefore the court shall decide an appropriate amount of pecuniary damages on behalf of the wife by determining the social and economic conditions of the parties, the defect rates of the parties and the rule of fairness.” Turkish Supreme Court accepts losing a financial support of the other spouse as a cause of pecuniary damages with this decision.