Viktor passed away in November. In January, his mother showed up at my home and announced she was taking me to court to strip me of my share in our apartment, calling our twenty-year marriage a sham. To defend myself, I had to tell strangers about the hardest year of our lives.
Raisa Arkadyevna didn’t take off her boots. She stood in my hallway in soggy boots, and dirty water dripped onto the rug beneath her. Igor hovered uncertainly by the door, holding a cardboard folder, hesitating to set it down.
I had just come back from school, my bag full of notebooks hanging from my shoulder, keys in hand. Viktor had been gone since November third, and since then, his mother had only been to my place once, on the fortieth day after his passing. She hadn’t said a word to me then.
“Your marriage was a sham,” said Raisa Arkadyevna. “I’ve filed a lawsuit.”
She looked at me the way someone looks at a bill that’s long overdue. I nodded, set my bag down on the floor, and put on my reading glasses, even though I had nothing to read yet.
“Come into the kitchen,” I said. “It’s better to look over documents at the table.”
She walked straight in with her boots on, leaving marks on the pale linoleum. She glanced at the wedding photo in the hallway. In the picture, she stands between Viktor and me, dressed in a green dress with a brooch.
Igor laid two stapled sheets on the table. The first was a copy of the lawsuit, the second a court notice. I read them standing, then sat down.
Raisa Arkadyevna requested to have me excluded from Viktor’s heirs and to strip me of my share of the apartment. The grounds stated, “marriage registered with no intention to start a family, for the purpose of obtaining living space.” The word “sham” appeared next to my last name, printed in neat type. I read that sentence twice.
“The apartment is frozen, Lyud,” said Igor, rubbing his neck. “It’s in the second document. While the case is in court, the Registry won’t register anything with it. Can’t sell, gift, or transfer it. That’s how it works, the lawyer said.”
“I wasn’t planning to sell anything, Igor,” I replied. “This is my home.”
“You came to him in 2005 with two bags,” said Raisa Arkadyevna, her voice measured, like someone who’d practiced this speech the entire way over. “Before that, you rented a room on Zavodskaya. But Vitya had a one-bedroom apartment from his grandmother, my mother. You didn’t marry the man, you married for the registration.”
I didn’t bother listing how many years we’d lived together. Twenty years and six months—this kitchen knew those better than she ever did.
“You lived side by side, not together,” she went on, placing her bag on her knees and clutching it with both hands. “I visited twice a year and saw a table set for two, and the TV. He left you, remember? Filed for divorce. If a man moves in with his mother, he’s already left, no matter how long he keeps living under your roof afterwards.”
“I’m listening, Raisa Arkadyevna,” I said.
“When I broke my leg, you came to visit me in the hospital, I admit that. But that’s just a moral duty, not family. A decent person doesn’t abandon an old woman. Having a marriage certificate is one thing; I’m talking about real life. Show me even a single paper where I acknowledged you as family.”
She looked over at Igor, and he straightened up like a student at the blackboard.
“I have Zoya and Alla,” she added. “They knew Vitya and they’ve seen you. Who do you have? Who will testify in court that you lived together as a real couple?”
“Lyuda, let’s do this the easy way, not through court,” Igor said, staring at his shoes. “Eight hundred thousand, and you move out by April sixteenth. Our first hearing is on the sixteenth, so we can settle everything quietly before that. You’re a teacher, you’ve rented a room before.”
“Thank you, Igor,” I replied. “But I won’t take the money. Let the court see how we lived.”
“You realize they’ll read everything about you out loud there?” He finally looked up. “The good stuff, and even some things you might have forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” I answered.
Raisa Arkadyevna stood up and left without another word. Igor grabbed the folder and followed her. Muddy boot prints trailed across the kitchen to the door.
I took off my glasses and looked at my hands. They were cold, even though the radiators were on. My first thought was not about the apartment. For twenty years, I believed Raisa Arkadyevna simply didn’t like me. Turns out, to her, I never existed at all.
I picked up the rag and put it back. Then I called Olga Vasilievna, whose sister’s case was handled by a lawyer.
“Olga, can you give me your lawyer’s number?” I asked when she answered. “I’ll explain later. I really need it today.”
Marina Lvovna saw me on Saturday, no appointment needed. Her office was about the size of my bathroom: a desk, two chairs, and a cabinet with folders reaching the ceiling. She looked to be about forty-five, thin and brisk, always pushing her glasses up to her forehead when she wanted someone to really listen.
She read the legal claim in four minutes and placed her palm flat on it.
“The word ‘sham’ is loud, but the case itself is tricky,” she said. “Your mother-in-law has no right to file a claim to declare your marriage invalid. Only a prosecutor or a spouse who was unaware of fraud can do that. Her lawyer knows this and has changed the claim: they’re asking the court to exclude you from the heirs and take away your share of the apartment, claiming the marriage was a sham. The court won’t annul the marriage itself. But to make a decision on her claim, the court will have to determine if your marriage was real.”
“And if she wins?” I asked.
“Right now, by law, you’re entitled to three-quarters of the apartment: half as a spouse and a quarter as an heir. She gets a quarter. If the court believes her version of events, you get nothing. No share of the apartment, not even widow status.”
“I need to know what you’ll need from me,” I said.
“What do you have to show for twenty years?” Marina Lvovna asked.
“Everything. Viktor didn’t care for paperwork, but I kept it all: receipts, tickets, slips. I’m a teacher, everything is in folders.”
“Then tell me what you don’t have.”
“Him. No one can say what he was thinking back in April 2005.”
“No one can ever say what someone else was thinking,” she replied. “The court looks at how people lived after they registered the marriage. Now, on a less pleasant note: Kravtsov, your mother-in-law’s lawyer, has requested the divorce case from the magistrate. It’s already been added to our file. Viktor Petrovich’s statement from December 12, 2013. Did you know about it?”
I knew. I always knew, the way you know there’s a scar under your clothes.
“He moved back in with his mother in September,” I said. “The plant closed and he lost his job. She told him, ‘Leave her, she can’t support you.’ I didn’t ask him to stay. Do you understand? He said he’d stay at his mom’s for a while, and I told him: fine. For five months, I never once called him first.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know how to ask for things. When you ask, you risk hearing a ‘no.'”
“The judge doesn’t care if you can ask or not,” said Marina Lvovna. “She’s looking at dates. The application was filed December twelfth, the case was closed on March fifth because the plaintiff withdrew it. In between those dates, he came back. This is actually the strongest line in our case—though Kravtsov reads it as the weakest for now. You’ll have to be the one to tell this in court, and you should be the first to tell it if we get the chance to speak. Otherwise, you’ll hear it from him.”
“I’ll tell it,” I said. “I just don’t know how to talk about all this in front of strangers.”
“Just like you tell your parents about your grades,” she replied. “Short and to the point.”
Then she took a sheet of paper and started making a list, never lifting her head.
“We’ll request the bank: the credit file and the payment history, and the account if you had a joint one. Your school and the factory where Viktor Petrovich worked: personal records. The property managers: payments for both apartments. The city hospital where your mother-in-law stayed in 2019: a copy of her file.”
“Why the hospital?” I asked in surprise. “I was just standing in the hallway when she was admitted. I have no idea what she signed there.”
“That’s exactly why we’ll check,” said Marina Lvovna. “We couldn’t request the archives before the case was opened. Now we can. Hospitals keep files for a long time, and they always respond to a court’s request.”
I paid the advance right away—almost everything I’d been saving for the fall. February and March were spent gathering everything I could myself.
On April 16th, we had the preliminary hearing. Judge Sokolova granted our motions and set the main hearing for May 26th. By evening, all the requests had been sent out. Raisa Arkadyevna never once looked in my direction.
On April 20th, Igor called.
“Lyud, one million two hundred,” he said without any greeting. “That’s all we have. If I need to, I’ll borrow from my father-in-law. Sign and we’ll be done.”
“Igor, three quarters of that apartment is already mine,” I replied. “You’re asking me to sell what isn’t yours.”
“Mom says you’re sly.”
“I’m not sly. I have the documents. And there’s a judge who’ll read them.”
I wrote in my notebook: “April 20th. 1,200,000.” The same way I write down grades. The price had gone up by four hundred thousand, which I didn’t like: people who are sure they’ll win don’t raise their price.
That night, I spread out twenty years on the floor of the living room. In piles, by year, just like I sort my class notebooks. Tickets to Anapa, 2007, with two names. The mortgage contract. A receipt for the washing machine we spent a week choosing—and argued about the color of the buttons.
From the hallway wall, I took down our wedding photo. Raisa Arkadyevna stands between me and Viktor, in a green dress with a brooch. Her hand is resting on my shoulder. For years, I walked past this photo every day, but I noticed that hand for the first time only now.
The hospital report still didn’t come.
On May 26, the air conditioner in the courtroom was out of order. Judge Sokolova asked for the door to be opened, and suddenly you could hear someone dragging a chair across the hallway floor.
The courtroom was small: just six rows of plastic seats, a coat of arms above the judge’s bench, and a fan placed on a stand. Raisa Arkadyevna sat in the front row in a dark overcoat, even though it was twenty-five degrees outside.
Next to her were her sister, Zoya Arkadyevna, and Zoya’s daughter, Alla. Igor chose a seat on the end. Kravtsov, young and dressed in a light shirt, opened his leather folder as if it were a book.
“The court would like to clarify,” the judge said without looking up from her papers. “The plaintiff is not entitled to request the annulment of the marriage. By law, only the prosecutor or the spouse who was unaware of the marriage’s fraudulent nature has that right. Today, the case concerns whether to exclude the defendant from the list of heirs and deprive her of her share in the joint property. To decide this, the court must determine whether the marriage was entered into with the intention of starting a family. I invite the plaintiff’s representative to speak.”
Kravtsov spoke smoothly and softly. In 2005, the defendant was renting a room. Two months after registering the marriage, she was registered in her husband’s one-room apartment. He called it a ‘convenient coincidence’ and glanced at the judge, hoping for a smile. The judge did not smile.
Zoya Arkadyevna stepped up to the stand and rested her hands on her purse.
“Vitya told me himself,” she began, “on Easter, in Raisa’s kitchen. He said, ‘Zoya, I married her out of pity, so she’d have a place to live.’ I remember it so clearly: he was sitting there, leaning on his elbow at the table, breaking bread into crumbs.”
“When was this?” the judge asked, looking over her glasses.
“A long time ago. Fifteen years ago, maybe fourteen. I was celebrating my anniversary then, so it must be fifteen.”
Marina Lvovna stood up.
“Witness, who else was present during that conversation?”
“Raisa was there,” replied Zoya Arkadyevna. “She was washing dishes, her back to us.”
“So, the plaintiff,” clarified Marina Lvovna. “No one else?”
“No one else. We didn’t need anyone else around, just our own.”
“No further questions,” said Marina Lvovna and sat down.
Alla added that at family celebrations, I always sat at the edge and was the first to leave, almost like a guest. And it was true—I always sat at the edge. I never wanted to take someone else’s place.
Then Kravtsov asked to admit the magistrate’s case file and read aloud Viktor’s statement. His voice was even and distant: “Marital relations with the defendant ended in September 2013, we no longer shared a household, and reconciliation is impossible.”
“Someone in a real marriage doesn’t write ‘reconciliation is impossible,’” he said. “That’s the kind of thing written by a man who spent eight years waiting to get out of someone else’s agreement. Defendant, did you object to the divorce?”
I stood up and placed both hands on the back of my chair.
“I did not file any objections.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want to hold on to him.”
“You didn’t want to hold on to your husband,” said Kravtsov, “but you did want to hold on to the apartment?”
“Objection,” said Marina Lvovna. “That question is insulting.”
“Question withdrawn,” said the judge. “Plaintiff’s representative, please stick to the matter at hand.”
“Do you have children?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “We spent two years going to doctors, then we stopped.”
“So, when you referred to yourselves as a family…”
“Objection,” Marina Lvovna stood up again. “The question is not relevant to the subject of proof.”
“Sustained. The question is withdrawn.”
The judge was writing in her notebook. I watched the tip of her pen, trying to guess which word she wrote next. Raisa Arkadyevna sat very straight, her brooch gleaming on her collar. Igor stared into the folder on his lap. The ring on my left hand hadn’t come off in ten years; it had grown into my finger.
“Defendant, you refer to twenty years of married life,” the judge said as she closed the folder. “The court expects to see original documents as proof, not retellings. The session will continue on June sixteenth at ten o’clock.”
By the stairs, I saw Marina Lvovna looking tired for the first time ever.
“The judge was taking notes, but I have no idea what exactly,” she said. “Twenty years—that’s a lot of paperwork. Will we make it?”
“I’ve checked notebooks my whole life,” I replied. “I’ll make it.”
By the schedule board stood a tall man in a dark shirt, holding his cap in his hands. I didn’t recognize him at first: Nikolai Petrovich Kuzmin, Viktor’s foreman. At the funeral, we barely spoke.
“They told me at the shop: Yartseva is on trial,” he said. “I took a half-day off, thought I’d come to the courtroom, but they only let in people on the list. Tell me when to come. I’ll say how it really was.”
“The sixteenth, at ten,” Marina Lvovna chimed in and took out her notebook. “We need to list you as a witness.”
“List me. Vitya and I worked in the same shop for twenty-four years. If what they were saying here was ever said, he never told anyone. I would’ve heard it.”
I didn’t cry—neither in the courtroom nor in the corridor. That was the only thing I managed that day.
Twenty years fit into one suitcase on wheels. I rolled it over the courthouse tiles, and the wheels made a louder noise than I wanted.
Separate from everything, in a clear plastic sleeve at the top of my bag, was a sheet from the hospital. It arrived on Friday, June twelfth. I read it once in Marina Lvovna’s office and never took it out again.
Nikolai Petrovich, Vera Ilyinichna in her hat, and Olga Vasilievna were waiting by the courtroom door. We entered together.
“Defendant, you have the floor,” the judge said. “State your position.”
I walked up to the podium. The speech I’d prepared stayed in my bag. I spoke the way you do at a parent-teacher meeting: one thing at a time.
“People have already talked about 2013 without me, so let me speak. In September, the plant closed the shop, Viktor was laid off. He didn’t leave his room for three weeks. His mother said, ‘Leave her, she can’t support you.’ So he went to her. I did not try to keep him and never once called first. In December, he filed for divorce. I came to the hearing and didn’t object. That’s the truth, and I won’t hide it.”
Kravtsov leaned forward a little, waiting for a weak spot. I didn’t give him one.
“On February 21st, 2014, he knocked on our door,” I continued. “He didn’t have his keys; he’d left them on the table when he left. He arrived with two bags and a jar of pickles his mother had packed for him. He said, ‘Lyuda, I can’t have lunch alone anymore.’ On March 5th, he wrote his withdrawal from the lawsuit himself. That withdrawal is in the court file, written in his own hand.”
“Defendant, please return to the substance of the case,” the judge said, but her voice had grown softer.
“In 2015, we sold that very one-room apartment they’re accusing me about. Viktor himself said, ‘Let’s sell and buy a two-room place so you can have your own room for your notebooks.’ We didn’t have enough money, so we took out a mortgage, and I was a co-borrower. I put in four hundred thousand of my own savings and paid the loan for seven years. In December 2022, we paid it off early. No one would do that just for someone else’s apartment.”
Then the judge began to read. Marina Lvovna handed her documents, the judge accepted them without looking up, stacking them to the left. The credit agreement from August 14, 2015. A bank statement: payments from September 2015 through December 2022. A statement about a joint account opened in 2009: all these years, payments for the apartment and vacations came from there.
A response from the factory: in Viktor’s personal file, only my name is listed under ‘family members’ since 2005. Under ‘who to notify in case of an accident,’ it’s my name too. A response from the school: in my file, Viktor Petrovich Yartsev is listed, along with the phone number of his workshop.
We put three photo albums on the table: Anapa 2007, Karelia 2011, Baikal 2018. Train tickets in both our names. Kravtsov remarked that tickets don’t prove a family; anyone can buy them.
“The court will assess everything as a whole,” the judge replied, still not looking up at him.
Nikolai Petrovich stepped up to the stand, holding his cap with both hands.
“Vitya and I have worked together in the same workshop for twenty-four years,” he said. “At twelve ten, he’d call his wife. Every day. We joked about it: you could set your watch by him. From September 2013 to February 2014, he didn’t call. He sat alone in the cafeteria, putting his phone on the table. We all saw it. But in February, I saw him pull out his phone and say, ‘Lyuda, I’m coming.'”
“Did you personally hear their conversation?” Kravtsov asked.
“I heard a man say, ‘Lyuda, I’m coming,'” Nikolai Petrovich replied, holding his gaze. “That’s all I need to know.”
Vera Ilinichna came forward wearing a hat and adjusted it before speaking.
“We’ve lived on the same floor for eleven years,” she said. “Lyuda used to leave me her keys when they went on vacation so I could water the ficus. Vitya would bring me back a magnet from every place they went. Their whole life is on my fridge, you can come take a look yourself.”
“You can’t know what goes on behind closed doors,” Kravtsov said.
“No, I can’t know behind closed doors. But our walls are panel-thin,” Vera Ilinichna replied. “I know when their TV goes on and what program they watch. For eleven years, every Saturday, they had loud arguments over the remote. That’s what a family is, young man.”
Olga Vasilievna put it simply:
At every school event, he would sit in the last row holding her coat. We used to joke that Lyudmila Nikolaevna had her own personal coat checker.
Kravtsov stood up. His voice was sharper than it had been in May.
“Your Honor, let’s say over the years the relationship has taken shape. But the question of legitimacy is judged by the moment of registration. On April 22, 2005, the defendant had no intention of creating a family. Anything that happened after that is just two people getting used to sharing four walls.”
“Intent is evaluated based on behavior both before and after registration,” Marina Lvovna said. “The plaintiff attended both the registration and the celebration. There’s a photograph in the case: the plaintiff stands next to the defendant, her hand on the defendant’s shoulder.”
“Being at the banquet isn’t proof of the bride’s intentions,” Kravtsov said.
“The court will decide,” the judge said, removing her glasses. “But that’s not all. We have received a response from the city hospital to the defendant’s inquiry. The court will recess for fifteen minutes. After the break, the document will be presented to both parties.”
For the first time, Raisa Arkadyevna looked straight at me. I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and walked out into the hallway.
After the break, the judge entered the room more quickly than usual.
“The court will now present the document,” she said as she put her glasses on. “City Hospital No. 4, in response to the court’s request: a copy of Raisa Arkadyevna Yartseva’s medical file for 2019. On page six there is a handwritten voluntary consent from the patient allowing the release of health information. This document is now being given to the plaintiff’s representative.”
Kravtsov took the sheet. I saw his face change: at first looking for something to latch on to, then giving up. He handed the page to Raisa Arkadyevna.
She brought the paper close to her eyes, then held it at arm’s length—her glasses were still in her purse. She read slowly. I knew what it said. One line, large and slightly slanted, with her signature at the bottom.
“Defendant, do you have any questions for the plaintiff?” the judge asked.
I stood up. Marina Lvovna didn’t touch my sleeve, just gave a barely visible nod.
“One question, Your Honor.” I turned to Raisa Arkadyevna. “In January, in my kitchen, you demanded at least one document where you recognized me as your own. The court requested this paper from the hospital. Whose handwriting is on it?”
Raisa Arkadyevna was silent. The paper in her hands was visibly shaking.
“It’s my handwriting,” she finally said. “I wrote it in the hospital room, lying down, on the nightstand. They gave me a pen, and I wrote it.”
“Plaintiff, please read to the court what you wrote,” the judge said.
Raisa Arkadyevna brought the page up to her eyes again.
“Information about my health should be shared with my son Viktor and my daughter-in-law Lyudmila,” she read. “Tell my daughter-in-law everything; she takes care of me.” At these last words, her voice was softer than when she began.
“Do you confirm that in 2019 you called the defendant a close person?” the judge asked.
“I confirm,” responded Raisa Arkadyevna. She straightened up, but the brooch on her collar trembled. “Viktor was at work, and she was nearby. I was writing about the hospital, not the marriage. This has nothing to do with what we are deciding today.”
“The court will decide what is relevant,” said the judge.
“I request a recess to consult with my client,” said Kravtsov.
“Denied. You had a break fifteen minutes ago.”
Raisa Arkadyevna placed the paper on the table and smoothed it with her hand, as if smoothing a tablecloth. Igor stared into the folder on his lap, not looking up. Vera Ilyinichna opened her mouth to speak, but Olga Vasilievna took her by the elbow.
The judge went to the deliberation room for forty minutes. I sat there counting the cracks on the floor tiles. There were nine.
When she returned, everyone stood up.
“In the name of the Russian Federation,” the judge announced. “The court denies in full the claims of Raisa Arkadyevna Yartseva against Lyudmila Nikolaevna Yartseva. Raisa Arkadyevna Yartseva must pay Lyudmila Nikolaevna Yartseva the representative’s fee in the amount of seventy thousand rubles. The interim measures imposed by the ruling on January twenty-sixth are to be lifted once the decision becomes legally binding.”
She placed the document down and removed her glasses.
“The court finds it necessary to clarify,” she added. “The plaintiff claimed there was no family, but in a document written in her own hand, she called the defendant a close person. Filing such a claim is regarded by the court as an abuse of rights. The plaintiff’s right to an inheritance share as mother of the decedent is not affected by this decision; she retains a quarter of the apartment.”
Raisa Arkadyevna was still standing, while Igor already held her bag and folder. As she passed my chair, she stopped. I thought she might say something. She glanced at my suitcase, which held twenty years inside, and walked toward the door.
The decision took effect on July twenty-fourth: no one appealed. On August nineteenth, I was at the notary’s office—a woman of about sixty with short nails.
She placed two documents in front of me: a certificate of ownership of a marital share and a certificate of inheritance. Together, they amounted to three-quarters of the apartment. By law, Raisa Arkadyevna kept a quarter, and I did not argue with the law.
“Check the names and dates,” the notary said. “It takes longer to fix mistakes than you think.”
On the first line of the first document, it said: “issued to the surviving spouse.” The word was in the masculine form, just as on the form. Below it were my surname, first name, and patronymic. I read that line three times before signing.
