FINLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Pekka Tuunainen, Pekka Tuunainen Attorneys Ltd
such cases Finnish courts have always jurisdic - tion on financial matters. According to the Brussels IIa Regulation this jurisdictional connection with divorce proceeding has limitations if a spouse has applied divorce on the grounds they have been habitually resident in Finland and they resided there for at least a year immediately before the application was filed or they are habitually resident in Finland and they resided there for at least six months immediately before the application was made and they are a Finnish citizen. In these cases, jurisdiction of a Finnish court over the financial matters is sub - ject to the spouse’s agreement even though the divorce case has jurisdiction in Finland. In other cases, Finland courts have jurisdiction if (not depending on divorce proceeding): • the spouses were last habitually resident in Finland and one of them still resides there; • the respondent is habitually resident in Fin - land; and • both spouses are Finnish citizens. In these cases spouses can make an agreement on jurisdiction, but agreed jurisdiction is limited to countries where marriage was concluded, or to the country of choice of law of the spouses’ marital property regime. Jurisdiction can be contested if the above-men - tioned requirement for jurisdiction is not met or spouses have agreed on jurisdiction. Courts are required to determine jurisdiction ex officio, but this not always possible due to lack of infor - mation and in such cases jurisdiction must be opposed when responding for the first time to court.
If financial proceedings have already com - menced in some other jurisdiction before being filed in Finland, it is possible to apply to stay pro - ceedings in Finland. Depending on the matter, this can lead to the ultimate end of proceedings, or a temporary hold. In many international cases it is not uncommon to have separate ongoing processes in different jurisdictions if one party can prove that local financial matters will not be handled without Finnish proceedings. 2.2 Service and Process If spouses cannot agree on the financial mat - ters and distribution of assets, the district court will appoint a distributor upon application. Such application may be filed by either spouse or one of them. No reasons need be supplied for the request to nominate a distributor. If only one of the spouses makes the application, the district court ex officio serves the application on the other spouse and reserves for the other spouse the possibility to issue a written state - ment on application. As there are no grounds needed, the only thing that can be disputed in practice is the distributor’s person; who will be the distributor. Although the law does not require it, distributors’ duties are performed by attorneys or other legal professionals (law professors, former judges, etc). The distributor must be absolutely impartial with regard to all parties. In Finland, it is not possible to have all financial matters handled in a court of first instance. Only limited and specific marital property financial matters can be taken to court, which happens very seldom. A distributor is the first instance and after one is nominated, all services are pri - vate acts between parties and the distributor. It
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