Thousands of Poles who believed they were long divorced are discovering an unsettling possibility: They may still be legally married.

The confusion is an unexpected upshot of Poland’s years-long battle over a politicized judiciary spilling into everyday life, as Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist government tries to undo reforms of the legal system imposed by its nationalist predecessors.

The problem surfaced in January in the northeastern town of Giżycko, where a divorced couple went to court expecting routine paperwork to divide their assets. Instead, they were told that in the eyes of the state, they had never been divorced at all.

The case boils down to moves by Tusk’s pro-EU administration to reject decisions by some judges appointed under the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) administration that led Poland’s government from 2015 to 2023.

The Giżycko judge ruled that the couple’s original divorce judgment was legally “non-existent” because it had been signed off by one of the “neo-judges” appointed under reforms designed by previous Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro.

EU courts later ruled that Ziobro’s overhaul had undermined judicial independence, leaving Tusk’s government grappling with how to dismantle the system without undermining legal certainty.

It’s unclear how many similar rulings may exist across Poland, but the scale is vast. The country records around 57,000 divorces a year, and tens of thousands of routine cases, including divorces, may have been decided by judges appointed under the disputed system.

Kinga Skawińska-Pożyczka, a lawyer at Warsaw-based firm Dubois i Wspólnicy, said the decision was flawed and should be overturned on appeal, arguing that a court handling a property dispute should not have questioned the validity of a final divorce ruling. “The Giżycko ruling should be treated as an exception, not a rule,” she said.

But others warned that even isolated rulings can have wider consequences. “A system that starts mass-questioning its own rulings stops being a system,” said Bartosz Stasik, a Wrocław-based lawyer. “Nobody wants to be the one to tell thousands of people their divorces, inheritances or verdicts don’t exist — but every avalanche starts with a single stone.”

Political clash

At the center of the dispute is the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), a body that nominates judges. In 2017 Ziobro’s Law and Justice government rewrote the rules so that parliament, not judges, chose most of its members. 

By the time EU courts weighed in, hundreds of judges had already been appointed or promoted under the new system, including those handling everyday cases like mortgages, inheritance and divorces.

Tusk’s government has been trying to limit the fallout from disputes over neo-judges. One proposal making its way through parliament would allow childless couples to divorce administratively at civil registry offices, bypassing the courts altogether.

Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek called the Giżycko ruling “very disturbing,” warning that the crisis around neo-judges has entered “the most sensitive areas of citizens’ lives — family matters, finances and basic legal certainty.”

He blamed the situation on Ziobro’s reforms. Żurek also pointed to President Karol Nawrocki, a PiS ally, whose repeated veto threats have stalled government legislation aimed at repairing the rule of law. Citizens, he said, “cannot be made to pay the price for political decisions they had no influence over.”

PiS lawmakers and their allies have seized on the ruling as evidence of institutional collapse under Tusk.

From Budapest, where he has received political asylum, Ziobro said the ruling showed the government was willing to unleash “real chaos and anarchy” to undermine his reforms, even if it meant destroying ordinary people’s lives.

During a heated parliamentary debate, PiS lawmakers branded the government’s proposal for out-of-court divorces an “attack on marriage,” while conservative legal groups and right-wing media also accused the government of admitting the justice system no longer works.

With parliamentary elections due next year, PiS have clearly spotted what they think is an effective line of attack. That means the fight over the court system is fast becoming a political gamble over whom voters blame for the chaos — the original authors of the PiS-era reforms, or those trying to undo them.

While Tusk’s Civic Coalition still leads in polls, support for its coalition partners has been sliding, raising the prospect he could lose power even if his party finishes first.