Austrian Couple Faces Charges for Pension Fraud After Marrying and Divorcing 12 Times

vienna - An Austrian couple is facing legal consequences for an unusual case of pension fraud involving multiple marriages and divorces.

An Austrian couple is set to stand trial for an extraordinary case of pension fraud. After the death of her first husband in 1981, the now 73-year-old woman from Graz, Austria, was entitled to a widow's pension. However, when she remarried a year later, she lost that pension but received a "severance payment" of around 27,000 euros in accordance with Austrian law.

This sparked an idea for the couple. In 1988, they filed for divorce, citing his job as a truck driver keeping him away from home too much as the reason for growing apart. After the divorce was finalized, the woman regained her widow's pension. Over the following decades, the duo would marry and divorce each other eleven more times, each time cashing in on the scheme, reportedly accumulating over 326,000 euros between 1982 and 2022 through their "on-off marriages."

Their fraudulent activities were exposed when their greed became too evident. When authorities refused to pay out the compensation again in 2022, the couple took the pension fund to court. However, their appeal was dismissed by the Austrian Supreme Court in 2023, and a year later, a lower court ruled that all the previous compensations they received were unjustified.

The court noted that their marriages were not failures at all. Witnesses testified that the couple had been living together continuously for the past ten years and had a "model marriage." Their latest divorce application was declared void, leaving them still legally married. They are now facing fraud charges and await their trial.