Divorce and wedlock with employee to avoid registering a firm

- Nothing terrible has happened, - says his former wife Hanna. – We will not register a unitary enterprise. We have counted everything and it turned out that it would be unnecessary and unprofitable for us. We are working hard but we are getting less and less every year.

The reason for the divorce was … the President’s decree prohibiting private entrepreneurs to hire employees except for their family members and close relatives. The idea of their plan is like that: after the divorce Syarhei will marry one of his employees. The girl has been working for him for three years and has good recommendations. So she simply gets a new post - the one of the boss’s wife.

Part of the business will belong to Syarhei and part will belong to Hanna. The rest will be registered for their elderly parents while the lack of labour force will be compensated for by the new wife.

- In spite of the fact that we dissolved our marriage a month ago nobody knows anything about it. Even parents don’t know it. We do not know what to tell them because they are conservative people and wouldn’t understand our decision. We even got married in church. We have lived for 19 years together and many people consider us a model family. We will tell it to some friends but a bit later. They do not have to know it. And we have to earn money. We have no other way out at the moment.

Hanna and Syarhei got acquainted when they were students in Minsk. The young couple was sent to work in Brest after the wedding and a daughter Tattiana was born into the family at that time. Syarhei got engaged in the trade business: he was bringing chocolates, toys, clothes and the popular Polish jeans to Belarus. He signed contracts with several suppliers later, bought a few kiosks in Brest and created a small storehouse. Other entrepreneurs started buying goods from him.

To continue the business Syarhei hired some more people to help him. All of them are officially registered. They have all the necessary notes in their work-books and social guarantees. The couple have two children now. The younger Aleh is 5 years old. He does not know that his parents dissolved their marriage. They decided to tell everything to their adult daughter and to keep it a secret from the boy: he has to acquire a normal understanding of family values. Syarhei and Hanna are sitting in a café with me and are telling me how they worked out the terms of the agreement of marriage with the new wife. Hanna even agreed to register the girl in their flat. They can only hope that she would not demand part of the business and the right to live in the flat if she decides to initiate a divorce. However, it must be mentioned in the agreement of marriage.

The marriage will be registered without any traditional celebration. Hanna says there will be three people at the ceremony – Syarhei, Hanna and the new wife.


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