MARGARITA CHERVONENKO: “WE DID NOT DRAW UP PRENUPTIAL AGREEMENT WITH YEVHEN BECAUSE WE HAD NOTHING WHEN WE WERE GETTING MARRIED. SO THERE WAS NOTHING TO DIVIDE”
Newspaper ‘Fakty i Komentarii’ [Facts and Comments], February 26, 2008, 21:27
http://www.facts.kiev.ua/2008/02/27/03.htm
The ex-wife of the former governor of Zaporizhia region Yevhen Chervonenko has created a civic organization named ‘I’m strong enough!’ to help divorced women.
Olena SHEREMETA, ‘FAKTY’ [Facts]
The emergence of a civic organization under the name ‘I’m strong enough!’ was announced at a press conference by Margarita Chervonenko, the ex-wife of Yevhen Chervonenko, a former governor of Zaporizhia region and the current Chairman of the National Organizational Committee for Holding Euro-2012 in Ukraine. She headed the brand new organization created to deal, absolutely for free, with the problems faced by Ukrainian women during a divorce and after it.
“Family values – this is the most important thing in the life of any woman. Unfortunately, two people are not always able to preserve the harmony and mutual understanding so necessary for a happy family life. As for any woman, living through this difficult period of my life – my own divorce – was not easy for me. That is why I had a desire to help other women and the idea of creating the ‘I’m strong enough!’ organization,” Margarita Chervonenko said. The organization will be holding seminars for women undergoing divorce proceedings, and also, there will be a possibility of consulting with lawyers and psychologists. All interested people will also be able to find the latest information and competent advice on the organization’s website. By the way, in the process of creation of this women’s rights organization, its activists established contacts with similar women’s organizations in the Netherlands, Germany, and with the well-known NGO European Women's Lobby. “An uncivilized divorce in Europe is a matter of the remote past, among other things, due to activities of NGOs, whose experience we will be using in Ukraine as well,” Margarita Chervonenko said.
To the question of FAKTY whether she was able to divide in a civilized way the property they jointly acquired with Yevhen Chervonenko, the former ex-wife of the well-known politician said: “Unfortunately, no. At present, I do not communicate with Yevhen at all, and we haven’t seen each other for more than a year. Currently, we are in the process of property division. Today, he is using all alone all the property we have acquired together.” “We did not sign a prenuptial agreement with Yevhen, because when we were getting married we had nothing. So there was nothing to divide, and consequently, there was nothing to mention in a marriage contract. All the more when people love each other, what prenuptial agreement can there be?..” said Margarita Chervonenko. “Neither a marriage contract, even the best one, nor the Family Code will be of any use if there is a possibility of depriving a wife of the entire property via courts,” Ms. Chervonenko specified.
By the way, Margarita Chervonenko looks gorgeous after the divorce: she is slim, looking visibly younger, in a stylish fitted red jacket and white blouse with a big turn-down collar and a scoop neckline, she was far from making an impression of a woman destroyed by a divorce. Moreover, Margarita Chervonenko refuted the prehistory of the divorce the mass media learned from her ex-husband. In the words of Yevhen Alfredovych, she allegedly was reluctant to go with the husband, like the wives of Decembrists once did, when the President appointed Chervonenko as the governor of Zaporizhia region, having allegedly said that she would not go to the middle of nowhere… “I am surprised to be reading in press everything Yevhen was saying about me: the turns of speech he reported as allegedly my words, are not at all common for me,” – Ms. Chervonenko assured. “Yevhen was dealing with politics, and me – with our family business, and then, quitting everything all of a sudden and going to Zaporizhia? You can’t act like that as well…,” the ex-wife of the former Zaporizhia governor concluded.
In the words of Margarita Chervonenko, common friends they had with Yevhen Alfredovych turned their backs on her after the divorce, as by that moment, each of the spouses had formed an own circle of contacts. Nevertheless, the ex-wife of the well-known politician has decided to create, figuratively speaking, a “school of mutual aid” for women, in the same way the singer Lolita Milyavskaya once did in her time.