Divorce, Greek Style

Death and taxes are unavoidable. For most people, marriage and taxes seem equally inescapable. Not for tempestuous Soprano Maria Callas. By signing her name to a piece of paper in the American embassy in Paris and renouncing her U.S. citizenship, she shed not only her husband but a hefty potential tax obligation as well.

Maria's legal triumph over finance and wedlock was based largely on an accident of birth. Her parents were Greek, but she was born in New York, which made her a citizen of both Greece and the U.S.--a combination that to Maria, at least, seemed to offer nothing special. For the last few years, in fact, she has made her home in Paris and Monte Carlo.

It took a lawyer to point out the unexpected advantages of her Greek citizenship. What got the lawyer into the act was the fact that Maria wanted to divorce her husband, Italian Industrialist Giovanni Meneghini, whom she married in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Verona in 1949. The trouble was, Meneghini kept saying "No." Since Italy countenances no divorces at all, nothing could be done about the situation in the country where they were married. To make matters worse, a husband's cooperation is usually required, even in such mills as Mexico and Nevada, if the divorce is to be recognized elsewhere. Maria appeared stuck. There was nothing to do but continue cruising the world with her great and good friend, Greek Shipowner Aristotle Onassis.

Then Callas' lawyers told her that under Greek law Greek citizens are validly married only if the ceremony is performed in the Greek Orthodox Church--which hers was not. Eureka! By giving up her U.S. citizenship, she would become a Greek and nothing but a Greek. Which meant that she would also become a single woman again.

"It was very painful," Callas insisted after she signed the necessary papers, even though "the Americans never really considered me an American." But then she admitted: "Freedom is so nice." It is indeed. It means virtual divorce from U.S. income taxes as well as from Meneghini. As an American citizen living abroad, Callas had to pay on all her earnings over $25,000, a considerable amount. As a Greek, she has to pay U.S. taxes only on what she earns in the U.S.

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