Pursuant to Art. 58 § 2 of the Family and Guardianship Code, if the spouses share a flat, the court in the divorce decree rules on how to use this flat for the time the divorced spouses live in it.
The ruling on the method of using the shared flat for the period of residence of the divorced spouses usually consists in temporarily assigning to each of them a certain part of the shared flat for separate use. This ruling will have consequences such as dividing things quod usum.
This means that even a spouse who does not have any right to the apartment may be allocated a separate part of a shared flat. Then it remains under the protection provided for by the provisions of the Act on the protection of the rights of tenants (judgment of SA in Gdańsk of February 25, 2011, I Aca 928/10).
In some cases, the obligation to adjudicate in the divorce decree on the use by the spouses of the shared apartment is excluded. The court is not obliged to adjudicate in the divorce decree on the manner in which the spouses use the shared flat, if the spouses have actually divided the flat and neither of them requests that a ruling on this matter be included in the divorce decree (Resolution of the Supreme Court of 10/02/1977, III CZP 74/76).
The court may waive the ruling on the method of using a shared flat also in the event when, due to the type of flat, the ruling on separate use of individual parts of the flat would be redundant (Resolution of the Supreme Court of 13.01.1978, III CZP 30/77). In practice, the courts depart from such a ruling if the shared flat is a studio apartment.
Additionally, it should be emphasized that the conflict between divorced spouses cannot be regarded as an objective necessity for the ex-spouse to leave his apartment (decision of the Supreme Court of October 5, 1981, III CRN 190/81).
It should be added that the remaining part of the discussed provision states that in exceptional cases, when one of the spouses by his grossly reprehensible conduct prevents them from living together, the court may order his eviction at the request of the other spouse. At the joint request of the parties, the court may, in the divorce decree, also decide on the division of a shared flat or on granting a flat to one of the spouses, if the other spouse agrees to leave it without providing a replacement flat and a substitute room, provided that the division or its allocation to one of the spouses are possible.