For Elena, receiving a court summons for the dissolution of marriage was no surprise. The last year of her life with Anton had felt like a slow, painful fading. His constant late nights at work, the coldness, the distant gaze—all of it left no doubt. And a month ago he simply came home, packed his things, and said he had “met someone else” and that “this would be fairer.” Fairer. What a strange word for betrayal.
She didn’t try to stop him. The pain was dull and throbbing, like an old injury, but along with it came relief. At last she no longer had to pretend, to try to get him to talk, to look for the fault in herself. It was over.
She lived in her own apartment—a spacious, bright two-room place that had come to her from her parents long before she met Anton. That home was her fortress, her refuge, which now, after he left, was slowly becoming hers alone again. She started doing things she’d never gotten around to: she re-papered the bedroom walls, bought the new armchair she’d long dreamed of. She began to settle back into her own life.
A week after receiving the summons, he called. His voice was dry and businesslike.
“Hi, Lena. We need to meet and discuss the details of the division. Without lawyers, so we don’t waste extra money.”
She agreed. She wanted to believe they could part civilly.
They met at a café. He arrived with a folder, as if for a business negotiation.
“So,” he began, opening the folder. “Regarding jointly acquired property. The car—me, I’m the one who drives it. The garage—you, we can appraise it and deduct it from my share. The dacha…”
He spoke about their ten-year marriage as if reading out the liquidation balance sheet of a bankrupt company. Elena’s heart tightened, but she held herself together.
“And of course, the apartment,” he said, moving on to the main point.
“What about the apartment?” Elena asked.
“We’ll split it, as the law provides.”
“Anton, the apartment is my premarital property. It is not jointly acquired and is not subject to division. That is the law.”
He looked up at her. There was no shame or embarrassment in his eyes. Only a cold, stubborn displeasure.
“What do you mean, your apartment isn’t split?” he protested, genuinely indignant. “I was counting on a share after the wedding.”
She stared at him, unable to believe her ears. “Counting on it.” So, it turned out that when he married her, he had already done his calculations.
“What share were you counting on, Anton?” she asked as calmly as she could.
“Half, naturally!” he started to get worked up. “I lived in that apartment for ten years! I paid the utilities! I changed light bulbs and fixed the faucet! I invested my life, my time into it! You think that’s worth nothing?”
“I think that’s called ‘being married,’” she shot back. “For my part, I cooked, did laundry, and cleaned. Should I also invoice you for housekeeper services?”
“Don’t twist things!” He slapped his palm on the table. “That’s different! I’m a man, I invested in the main asset! I was counting on us, when we split up, doing what civilized people do—selling the apartment and dividing the money. That would be fair!”
“Fair.” He, the man who left her for another woman, was now talking to her about fairness.
“Fair, Anton, is what’s written in the law. And the law says you have no rights to my home,” her voice turned icy.
“To hell with your law!” hysteria crept into his voice. “There’s also conscience! Basic human decency! I’m not leaving with one suitcase! I didn’t spend ten years of my life on you for nothing!”
He didn’t even realize what he had said. But she heard it. “Spent.” As if on a failed project.
“So, in your view, I should pay you severance? Compensation for having been my husband?”
“Call it whatever you want!” He was beside himself with rage now that he understood his plan was collapsing. “I’m not leaving empty-handed! I’ll sue! I’ll prove I made ‘inseparable improvements’ to the apartment! I’ll find witnesses!”
He poured out his resentment, his greed, his disappointment that his grand exit to a new, younger lover had not turned out to be so triumphant. Obviously, he had planned to start a new life with a solid cash infusion from selling her apartment. His calculation had failed.
Elena sat and looked at him. At this stranger, shouting, spitting with fury. And she no longer felt the pain of his betrayal. She felt only disgust and… relief. A vast, all-consuming relief that this person would no longer be in her life.
Silently, she stood up, left money on the table for her coffee, and walked toward the exit.
“Where are you going?! We’re not finished!” he shouted after her.
She paused for a second, but didn’t turn around.
“We finished, Anton. A year ago. When you decided your life with another woman would be better. Now, please, be consistent in your decisions. You left. So leave all the way. And take your ‘calculations’ with you.”
She stepped out onto the street. It was raining. But she felt as if she had just walked out of a stuffy, smoke-filled room into fresh air. She knew he would sue. That what lay ahead was filth, nerves, and spending money on lawyers. But she also knew she would win. Because on her side stood not only the law. On her side stood the truth.
When Elena walked out of the café onto the damp, rain-scented street, she didn’t go home. She turned into a quiet square, sat down on a wet bench, and only then allowed herself to breathe. The air entered her lungs with difficulty, as if she had just surfaced after a long, suffocating dive.
She didn’t cry. The period of tears had passed a year ago, when he left. Now she felt something different—cold, almost nauseated revulsion mixed with a bitter, belated revelation. She suddenly saw their ten-year life under a new, merciless light. She realized his betrayal had not begun a year ago, when he met another woman. It had been woven into the very fabric of their marriage from the beginning.
To him, she had never been a partner, but a project, an asset. Like a smart investor, he put in exactly as much as was necessary to maintain her “market value”: compliments, flowers, rare displays of care. And she, blinded by love and by gratitude that a “simple girl” like her had been chosen by “such a man,” gave him everything: her energy, her support, her admiration. And her premarital apartment, which she had gladly turned into “their shared nest.” She hadn’t seen that for him it was not a nest, but simply an office with a convenient bedroom and free service.
And now, when he decided to wind down that project and move on to another, he came for the liquidation value. He wanted a “golden parachute” for having been her husband for ten years.
She sat on the bench for probably an hour. The rain grew heavier, but she didn’t notice. In her head, emotional chaos gave way to a cold, professional calculus. She was a lawyer. And she understood that this war had to be waged not on the field of emotions, where he had always known how to defeat her by provoking guilt. This war had to be moved onto her territory. The territory of law, facts, and irrefutable evidence.
Back home, the first thing she did was call her attorney, who was handling their divorce.
“Good afternoon, Boris Eduardovich. This is Elena. We have a new development. My ex-husband is claiming half of my premarital apartment.”
The attorney on the other end fell silent for a moment.
“On what grounds?” he asked.
“On the grounds of ‘conscience’ and the fact that he ‘was counting on a share,’” Elena replied, and for the first time irony crept into her voice.
“I see,” the attorney sighed. “Brace yourself, Elena. This will get dirty. He can’t win on the law, which means he’ll try to win by wearing you down psychologically.”
And he was right. The avalanche began the next day. First Anton called himself. He had changed tactics. He no longer protested. He pressed on pity.
“Lena, I got heated yesterday. I was emotional. But understand, I’m desperate. I’m left with nothing. And you… you’re sitting pretty. Don’t you feel sorry for me? We’re not strangers.”
She hung up in silence. An hour later his mother called.
“Lenochka, dear, how can this be?” she wailed. “Antosha told me everything! You’re throwing him out onto the street with one suitcase! He’s not a stranger to you! He put his soul into that apartment! He even put up a shelf there!”
“The shelf.” That shelf became the symbol of his “inseparable improvements.”
Elena patiently explained to her mother-in-law that the apartment was her personal property and that Anton had left the family of his own accord.
“You’re heartless!” her mother-in-law pronounced, and hung up.
Then came the attacks on social media. He posted messages full of vague, yet clear-to-mutual-friends insinuations. “How terrifying when love dies and you’re thrown out into the street, with all the good forgotten,” “Some people measure relationships in square meters.”
It was a systematic, methodical harassment. He tried to destroy her reputation, to paint her as a monster so that, against that backdrop, her refusal to “share” would look even uglier.
Elena did not respond. On her attorney’s advice, she took screenshots of everything. And she prepared. She pulled all her financial records for the ten years of their marriage. She spent a sleepless week creating the most detailed report of her life. It wasn’t just a spreadsheet. It was a chronicle of her marriage in numbers.
The court hearing was scheduled for two months later. All that time she lived as if in a besieged fortress. But she did not surrender.
In the courtroom he sat across from her, next to his attorney. He looked confident. His attorney began reading out the claims. They were absurd. He demanded that he be recognized as having the right to half the apartment on the grounds that “during the marriage he made inseparable improvements that significantly increased its value.” Then came the list of these “improvements”: that very shelf in the bathroom, replacing the kitchen faucet, painting a wall in the living room, and even “regularly paying utility bills, which contributed to preserving the asset.”
When he finished, the judge, an older, tired woman, raised her eyes to Elena.
“Your position?”
Elena stood. She did not speak about love, hurt, or betrayal. She spoke in the language of her profession. The language of facts.
“Your Honor,” she began, her voice calm and steady. “My ex-husband’s claims have no legal basis whatsoever. The apartment is my premarital property, as confirmed by the certificate of title.”
She placed the document on the table.
“As for the ‘inseparable improvements.’ Here,” she set another folder on the table. “Here is the evidence. Here is the receipt from the store for that very ‘shelf.’ Its cost is 800 rubles. Here is the bill from the plumber I had to call after my ex-husband tried to ‘fix the faucet’ and flooded the neighbors downstairs. The damage amounted to 50,000 rubles, which I paid from my salary. Here are the photos of the wall in the living room he ‘painted,’ with drips and stains on the parquet, after which I had to hire a crew to redo the entire room.”
She laid document after document on the table.
“And as for paying the utilities…” she gave a short, mirthless smile. “Here are ten years of statements from my salary account. As you can see, 90% of all bills were paid from it. And here are statements from my ex-husband’s account. As you can see, during those same periods he was actively ‘investing’ in expensive fishing rods, fishing trips, and gadgets.”
She finished. The courtroom was silent. Anton’s attorney looked at his client with unconcealed irritation. Anton had gone pale. His grand plan for a “fair” division had just been publicly destroyed.
“Therefore,” Elena concluded, addressing the judge, “I not only do not believe my ex-husband has any right to a share in my apartment. I believe he is in significant financial debt to me for years of living at my expense. But unlike him, I will not invoice him for the past. I simply ask the court to follow the law.”
The judge delivered the ruling in five minutes. Anton’s claim was denied in full.
Out in the corridor, he caught up with her.
“You…” he hissed. “You destroyed me. You shamed me.”
“No, Anton,” she looked at him for the last time. Not with anger, not with hatred. With cold, detached pity. “You destroyed yourself. The moment you decided that my love and my home were just merchandise to be divided.”
She turned and walked down the long, echoing corridor of the courthouse. She did not look back. She knew that ahead of her lay a new, free life. In her own apartment, won back from the past. And in that life there would never again be room for people who “count on a share.
