Separation court also divides property from an earlier PACS

The Court of Appeal, sitting in its superior jurisdiction, held on 2 February 2026 that the Civil Court (Family Section) may divide property a couple acquired under a French registered partnership before they married. Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti, Mr Justice Robert G. Mangion and Madam Justice Simone Grech dismissed an appeal against a partial judgment on jurisdiction in Z1 vs Z2. The case now returns to the Family Section to be heard on the merits.

The facts

The parties first entered a pacte civil de solidarité (PACS), the French registered partnership, which was registered at the French Embassy in Malta. In it they chose joint ownership, in equal shares, of whatever either of them acquired. Later they married in Malta, after signing a prenuptial deed that adopted separation of estates, chose Maltese law and gave the Maltese courts exclusive jurisdiction over matrimonial matters.

The marriage broke down within months and the wife sued for personal separation before the Family Section. Her eighth and ninth claims asked the court to dissolve and divide the property acquired while the PACS was in force. The husband accepted that the Maltese court could hear the separation. He pleaded that it lacked jurisdiction over those two claims, arguing that article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2016/1104 pointed to the French courts.

On 30 June 2025 the Family Section rejected the plea in a partial judgment, and the husband appealed. Both sides filed opinions from French lawyers. The two opinions agreed that the PACS ended automatically when the parties married, but disagreed on which country's courts could rule on its property.

What the court held

The court agreed with the Family Section that Regulation (EU) 2016/1103, on matrimonial property regimes, is the instrument that applies. Article 5(1) gives the court seized of a divorce or legal separation jurisdiction over matters of the matrimonial property regime arising in connection with that application.

Under the French Civil Code, a PACS is dissolved by operation of law when the partners marry. The court found that the parties never liquidated their PACS assets before the wedding. That property therefore passed into the marriage as paraphernal property, held in undivided halves.

The court then relied on three principles: non-fragmentation of jurisdiction, unity of jurisdiction and legal continuity. The move from PACS to marriage, it reasoned, was not the end of one shared life and the start of another. The same two people carried on the same domestic and economic life under a new legal frame.

The judgment is in English. The court put its conclusion this way: “the court seized to decide the personal separation case attracts and encompasses the jurisdiction over the patrimonial assets acquired during the preceding partnership.”

It added that one court can apply different substantive rules to different assets, according to when and under which regime each was acquired. Neither of the two regulations contains a rule of exclusive jurisdiction that stops a single forum from settling the whole economic relationship. The partnership and the marriage, the court said, “cannot be adjudicated as autonomous legal silos”.

The court dismissed the appeal, ordered the husband to pay the costs of the appeal and sent the case back to the Family Section.

Why it matters

A spouse cannot split a separation case by sending the pre-marital property to a foreign court. Where a registered partnership turned into a marriage without a liquidation, the Family Section can deal with the couple's whole property history in one case. Lawyers drafting a prenuptial deed for a couple leaving a foreign partnership should settle the partnership property in the deed itself.

Where it sits

Students meet the two property regimes regulations of 2016 as twins: Regulation (EU) 2016/1103 for married couples and Regulation (EU) 2016/1104 for registered partners. Both use habitual residence as the main connecting factor, and both aim to have related proceedings handled by the courts of one member state. This judgment reads them together where one status replaced the other by operation of law.

The court found the same idea of continuity in Maltese law. Article 11(3) of the Civil Unions Act (Chapter 530 of the Laws of Malta) provides that a civil union converted into marriage ends on conversion, and that the marriage is deemed to have subsisted from the date the civil union was formed.

The court relied on a ruling of the French Court of Cassation (First Civil Chamber) of 30 January 2019. That court held that the family judge may settle claims between spouses arising from cohabitation immediately before their marriage. The Court of Appeal also cited its own judgment of 11 November 2025, which held that the Family Section may divide all property spouses hold in common, whether acquired before or after a contract of separation of estates.

The Family Section had also referred to Regulation (EC) No 2201/2003 and to article 742 of the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure (Chapter 12 of the Laws of Malta) in finding that it had jurisdiction over the separation itself.

Source

Court of Appeal (Superior Jurisdiction), 58/2023/1, 2 February 2026.