The mother of Manuel Mallia’s children refuses to pay hospital bill

I told you some months ago that her real name – on her Maltese ID – is Codruta Cristian and not Codruta Mallia, and that she and Manuel Mallia are registered (their ID cards), at separate addresses, she in Valletta and he at Ta’ Cenc, and that this probably means they’re not married despite pretending they are.

Nothing wrong with not being married, though if you have children it’s always the better choice. What’s wrong is the fraud of creating and maintaining a false front for the sake of social convention and electoral purposes.

Married people are not officially registered at separate addresses because there are several legal issues, implications and risks to the more vulnerable spouse in a situation like that, not least the question of what constitutes, under the law, ‘the marital home’.

If you are registered at separate addresses you can be treated as de facto separated if one of the spouses decides to manipulate the situation to the detriment of the other.

Also, given that the name on her ID card is her maiden name, Codruta Cristian, while she calls herself publicly, officially and on Facebook ‘Codruta Mallia’, you can conclude that she hasn’t kept her maiden surname out of personal preference or Romanian tradition (is it Romanian tradition?) but because she has no choice.

And now Malta Today reports that when the mother of Manuel Mallia’s children received treatment at the state general hospital six years ago, the Department of Health sent her a bill.

They wouldn’t have sent her a bill if she were married to a Maltese citizen.

So you have to conclude that they sent her a bill because she is a resident alien who isn’t married to a Maltese citizen and who hadn’t bothered to obtain the European Health Insurance Card which would have entitled her to free treatment as the citizen of another EU member state.

Codruta Cristian owes Eur3,657.11 in fees for the treatment she received at Mater Dei Hospital in December 2008. The following July, she was served with a judicial letter demanding that she pay up. Three years later, the Department of Health obtained a garnishee order which went out to all the banks and found just Eur2,221 at Lombard Bank.

This is further evidence that they are probably not married (unless they have separate estates, which is unlikely in the circumstances). Had Codruta Cristian been married to Manuel Mallia and with the community of acquests regime under Maltese law, the garnishee order would have been slapped on his bank accounts too and the Department of Health would certainly have found a lot more than 2,000 euros.

The fascinating thing is that those two pathologically stingy people are trying to wriggle out of paying her hospital bill, when they can easily afford the 3,000 euros, by saying that she is not the (Elena/Elana) Codruta Cristian in question. Because, you know, there are so many women in Malta of that name.

And to think that for almost two years while this was going on, her husband was a cabinet minister. If it really were a case of mistaken identity, they would have sorted it out.

Interestingly, the reason it didn’t make the news before now is because nobody in the press knew that her real name is Codruta Cristian and not Codruta Mallia before I published her identity card details on this website – so the name Codruta Cristian wouldn’t have been linked to Manuel Mallia at the time, probably not even by anyone at the Department of Health.