The couple is suspected of defrauding the State by successively marrying and divorcing so that the woman would be reimbursed for her late husband’s widow’s pension.
A couple in Austria are under investigation for serious fraud after marrying and divorcing 12 times in the last 43 years. Despite the succession of marriages and separations, neighbors describe their relationship as an “exemplary marriage”. The real motivation behind the constant divorces would be the exploitation of a legal loophole to profit R$326,000 from the country’s social security system.
The scheme was based on the woman receiving compensation of 27 thousand euros each time she remarried, as compensation for the interruption in payments of the widow’s pension she received after the death of her first husband, in 1981. Just one year after death, the woman, now 73 years old, married her current partner for the first time. The couple divorced six years later, citing “incompatibility due to the husband’s work as a driver”.
This initial divorce gave beginning of a cyclical pattern: Marriages lasted about three years before being dissolved, only to be resumed later. However, investigators discovered that the couple was never really apart. Witnesses reported that they lived together throughout the period, sharing meals, a bed and a typical married life.
The aim of the scheme was to maximize earnings from widow’s pension payments. Each new marriage allowed the woman to receive 27 thousand euros in compensation, but the subsequent divorce reactivated the original pension payments, allowing the process to be repeated, reports the .
The couple managed to obtain €326,000 before the pension fund began refusing payments. The two even sued the fund, but the Austrian Supreme Court rejected the case in March 2024, considering the practice unjustified.
Now the Graz police have started a formal investigation into serious fraud. To date, the couple remains officially married, as their 12th divorce was not recognized by the authorities.
