Separation: He leaves, the debts remain
She lives in an idyllic village in the Rhineland. In a house with blue shutters, right on the vineyard. "Nice, how you live here," say visitors. Nice? Gudrun Werner * can hardly enjoy the idyll. "I have a concrete block on my neck, which makes me smaller and smaller," she says. The 53-year-old has debts. Half a million euros.
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"The loan agreements are ready," her husband had said, "we just have to sign in. Tomorrow we'll drive to the bank." - "I can not overlook that, Bernd," Gudrun Werner says in the car. "Stay out of it, just let me do it, I'll take out the loans," he says. Gudrun Werner provides guarantees. What that means, they explain neither the clerks at the banks nor the notary. To this day, she blames herself for not asking.
Financial adviser Helma Sick, who specializes in money and investment advice for women, has already explained to many people what a loan guarantee means. However, it was always too late. The installments ran, the debtor was gone or insolvent - and the bank held onto the guilty party. "Why are these women so good faithful?", Says Helma Sick outraged. "Why do not they first find out when nothing else can be done?" Because love can blind you. Also for financial risks. And because that's especially true for women. Men go bankrupt because they have taken over. Women go broke because the men have taken over and because they have "out of love" participated. In the end, they are left alone on debt.
Gudrun Werner must also live with the knowledge that she was purposefully deceived. At 18, she meets her future husband Bernd at a wine festival. He acts in a sympathetic way restrained, she falls in love with him, soon they are a couple. But when Gudrun Werner becomes pregnant, he cheats on her. She marries him anyway.
Gudrun Werner is an energetic, gripping young woman. In addition to caring for the child and the household, she takes over a flower shop and turns it into a prosperous business. Her husband, on the other hand, is still working with his parents, as temporary help, for a pittance. "It can not go on like this," she tells him again and again. When the second child announces himself, Bernd Werner says: "Then we'll do something new together."
Bernd Werner has long had a plan. He wants to buy a big winery. Complete basement, with about 30 wine tanks, a bottling plant, office buildings, a residential and a half-timbered house and a large hall - "a dream," he says. 1.8 million marks should cost the dream. The two men can raise DM 240,000, and for the remainder - more than one and a half million marks - Bernd Werner has already applied for a start-up loan from the Ausgleichsbank and a loan from the local savings bank. With this, he practically presents his wife with fait accompli. She signs, although she is queasy. "Women quickly feel disloyal when they withdraw their trust or even refuse to sign a pet by asking them," says Annette Schmedt, founder of the "Women in Damaged Women" Initiative.
Gudrun Werner does not suspect that her husband is already thinking of the possibility of divorce when starting their business together. Well advised by law, he lets the sales contract so that his wife takes a much higher risk than he: Bernd Werner acquires only the company, Gudrun Werner is the owner of the building, which she then leases him as the CEO. Financially, Gudrun Werner signs her "death sentence," as she says today. Otherwise she has nothing to do with the business, her husband leads him alone.
Initially, the winery throws off profits, but after two years, the decline begins. "If only I had once looked into the books!" Says Gudrun Werner, who had managed very successfully with her own company, the flower shop.
To balance losses for the time being, opens Bernd Werner always new accounts - "in the end there were so many that even the tax office later barely looked through" - and if he saves, then at the wrong end: the maintenance of the machines. This creates horrendous costs for repairs. Bernd Werner applies for two more loans. The Sparkasse grants them on the condition that his wife, who at that time has no income of her own, signs again as a guarantor. Today, such a contract would be void - the Federal Court has declared "housewife guarantees" 2006 in a judgment for immoral.
Women give the responsibility
Gudrun Werner reproaches her husband, the couple argues, he threatens to leave her. Immediately she turns back, "because I wanted to spare the children the divorce - I was so stupid!".This "typically feminine" sense of trust can be found among women of all ages and educational levels, financial advisor Helma Sick is convinced of this. And that although women today are usually at least as well-educated as men and earn enough money. What makes Helma Sick angry: "As soon as a man shows up, many women give up their own responsibilities and let them decide their money matters - because they think he can do that better than themselves. That's how they become addicted."
When Gudrun Werner recognizes the fraud of her husband, is it too late: the fortune gone, several hundred thousand euros debt, the marriage broken. Bernd Werner has moved to the third floor of the house, he has filed for divorce, but pays no support for the two children. Gudrun Werner is faced with nothingness. She wants to put her life back in order and does not know where to start.
In the rehab clinic, where she is treated after a hip operation, she falls head over heels in love with a fellow patient: Rainer Kramm *, an optimistic, self-sufficient person, offers her a shoulder to lean on. First renovate her house and then her life. He forces Bernd Werner to declare bankruptcy and compliments him from the house. He looks at 50 to 60 "filthy files" and finds out that the former entrepreneur has "penned" - to be able to shirk the alimony payments, but above all, not to be drawn by the banks. They comply with all demands to Gudrun Werner, who is the owner of all company buildings on paper.
Struggling with destiny
For months, Rainer Kramm works to limit the damage, negotiates with the banks and other creditors, and avoids foreclosures at the last moment. All this starts with the young relationship, but also welds the couple together. Gudrun Werner now has a strong ally. However, she has, without realizing it, replaced a dependency with a new one. And with all the happiness of her new relationship, she also mentally suffers from the consequences of her financial disaster, tortures herself with guilt, quarrels with her fate.
"Whining does not help," Financial adviser Helma Sick says soberly, "Women who have become guilty of being over-indebted should face reality, look closely at what happened, preferably with psychotherapeutic help."
How is life going now? The debts question everything
And free themselves as quickly as possible from the debts they are now being used for. A private insolvency procedure offers the chance to be debt free within the foreseeable future. Six years, those affected must pay as much as possible and must not make new debts. Then they will be forgiven the remaining amounts. And that, says Helma Sick, is the beginning of a new life, "albeit with great privations".
Who wants to go through such a procedure must give detailed information about his financial circumstances. Gudrun Werner did not want to expose himself to this - sometimes humiliating - procedure. "I've suffered enough," she says. Therefore, you still sit today, 14 years after the bankruptcy, the creditors in the neck. In order to be able to stay with her family in the residential building on the company premises, she has leased part of the building complex to a wine filler for a monthly sum of 5,000 euros. This money is distributed among the creditors, and the banks waive for the time being on the foreclosure sale of the house. But how long? Gudrun Werner avoids the mailbox. Many women who involuntarily got into debt like Gudrun Werner are also emotionally alone. Loss of existence is a traumatic experience that can even break up stable relationships. Some women may then have to live with their children from Hartz IV.
Such burdens have consequences: 90 per cent of "guiltless" women, according to the initiative of women in need of guarantee, suffer from sleep disorders, sudden skin diseases, asthma and other conditions that may be psychosomatic. Gudrun Werner has also felt for a long time how their debts have taken root in body and soul. "They take my breath away, optimism, going forward," she says. "The worst part is, I just do not know where I stand financially in old age." The future perspective is missing.
Rainer Kramm has also fallen ill - the back. Only with the help of strong medicines can he endure the pain at all. He has caught Gudrun Werner, now he carries heavily on this burden, which is intolerable even for two. "We do not know where the end is," he says. The interest adds up. In addition, there are always new costs, which in turn become debts: taxes, attorney's fees, waste and sewage fees. And the debt mountain keeps growing.
It will be fine.
"We have us and our love," says Rainer Kramm consoling when he learns that his partner does not know how to continue.Then again she is the one who encourages him and also himself: "Deep down in me I feel: It will be fine." The reality does not look so rosy. Gudrun Werner will have to live with her debts.
Watch out, trap!
What to pay attention to with loan guarantees Who wants to take out a loan guarantee, must be sure that he would be able to repay the loan alone if necessary. As a guarantor, you are responsible for repaying the money - and if the person who took out the loan fails, you pay alone!
Because they do not want to "hang" their partner, women tend to overburden themselves financially. Do not do that, but - with all your love - keep a cool head. Weigh off: What's your idea of taking over the guarantee? For example, would you be committed to starting a business even if it were not your partner's?
There are several types of credit guarantee. For example, you can specify that you can only use up to a certain amount and for a limited period of time. If you already say yes: Keep your risk as low as possible.
A credit guarantee is no "formality", (although banks often get that impression), but, as lawyers say, a "contractual contract" with possibly very far-reaching consequences. Do not let yourself be pushed to sign, But inform yourself, for example, in the legal advice of the consumer center, a lawyer or a financial adviser (addresses, for example, under www.finanzfachfrauen.de/). Information about the loan guarantee and the possible consequences for the guarantors may be available. a. at these contact points: Business start-up portal of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (search term "credit guarantee") www.existenzgruender.de Initiative of women who have suffered a loss www.buergschaftsgeschaedigte-frauen.de
