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The Indiana Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on April 9 regarding the division of marital property in the state between a couple who dissolved their marriage in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Oral arguments begin at 9 a.m. in the Supreme Court Courtroom and will be streamed online.
In 2017, a man and woman, both citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, married in Indianapolis, where the two lived at the time. The couple eventually returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina and in 2022, they jointly filed a petition for dissolution of marriage in a Bosnian court.
While the couple had joint property in Indiana, the property was not mentioned in the petition, so when the Bosnian court granted the dissolution, the marital property was not addressed.
In 2023, however, the wife filed a petition for dissolution of marriage in Marion Superior Court and requested a division of that property.
The husband sought to dismiss her petition under principles of comity, arguing that the Bosnian court already ruled on the dissolution of marriage, so Marion County couldn’t rule on the same matter.
The trial court granted the husband’s motion and denied the wife’s motion to reconsider.
The wife filed a motion to correct errors later that year, arguing Marion Superior Court erred in granting the husband’s motion for dismissal because the Indiana property wasn’t addressed in the Bosnian court ruling. Marion Superior Court granted her motion, setting aside the original dismissal.
The husband appealed the case to the Indiana Court of Appeals, citing comity and res judicata as to why the trial court should not have granted the wife’s motion.
In a September 2025 opinion authored by Judge Stephen Scheele, the appellate court affirmed the trial court’s ruling, stating that because comity is not a mandatory rule, it was up to the trial court to decide whether to dismiss the wife’s motion based on it. The appellate court determined that it couldn’t say whether the trial court abused its discretion by not dismissing the wife’s motion.
Addressing the res judicata argument, the appellate court stated that the rule doesn’t apply because the Bosnian court never addressed the division of marital property when it dissolved the couple’s marriage.
The husband has now petitioned the state supreme court to accept jurisdiction over his appeal.
The case is Osman Mulaomerovic v. Amira Mulaomerovic, 24A-DN-02727.
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