articles
China Elevator Stories
4000 Euros For 10 Video Calls
People tend to think that suing for custody is easy, but it’s not.
03/11/2024
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
One of the reasons why it isn’t is because of lawyers’ costs.
Suing for sole custody and the right to have contact with my kids, including applying for daily video calls and seeing them over their summer holidays, cost over 3,000 euros in lawyer’s costs (pro bono) altogether for three instances. I also paid over 1,000 euros to the constitutional court, so I could then apply to the ECHR (it is one of the prerequisites). Since I received nothing but biweekly video calls, it was rather expensive, albeit still less costly than the 250,000 euros and other amounts cited to me as the potential cost for such a lawsuit by other lawyers.
Applying to the ECHR cost me only a stamp, an envelope, and printing costs, as the court found no violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. Perhaps they didn’t look closely enough. I mean, I also haven’t found my children, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist or live somewhere.
Since my ex-husband didn’t allow me to have many video calls, this amounts to about 400 euros per call (probably closer to 450, some of which lasted only 10 minutes instead of an hour). While it is certainly worth seeing my children, it is also equivalent to at least half the cost of a flight ticket for each child.
Have you ever been to court?