Facts
[X.] and [Z.] (both born in 1964) married in 2001 and became parents of a son (born in 2001). At the joint request of the parties, the Presidency of the District Court of Aarau dissolved the marriage by judgment of 11 April 2007. The judgment regulated, among other things, the post-marital maintenance, child support, and the distribution of bonus payments. On 4 April 2008, [X.] filed a claim for modification of the divorce judgment. He demanded a gradual reduction of the post-marital maintenance and a reduction of his ex-wife's share in his bonus payments. He justified his modification requests by the fact that he had remarried on 11 June 2007 and a daughter (born January 2008) had resulted from this marriage. The District Court of Aarau partially upheld the modification claim and reduced the post-marital maintenance payments for certain periods. In all other respects, it dismissed the claim. The appeal filed by [X.] against this was fully dismissed by the High Court of the Canton of Aargau.Considerations
The Federal Court examined the complaint of [X.] against the High Court's judgment. It concluded that the High Court had exceeded its discretion in modifying the post-marital maintenance:
On the one hand, the High Court had disregarded legally relevant circumstances in the question of when a hypothetical income could be credited to the complainant's wife. In particular, it was not taken into account that the wife had only recently come from Romania to Switzerland and still had to learn the language. Furthermore, the situation of a married mother is not comparable to that of a divorced mother, which is why the Federal…