Ants Eistre, 64, and his Russian wife Galina Aslamova, 61, married last summer after a three-year courtship. But when they applied to Estonia's citizenship and migration department for a residence permit for Aslamova, officials there said the marriage was a sham designed to get Aslamova into the country.
The couple maintain their marriage is valid and are suing the department.
Eistre and Aslamova, who is from the Siberian city of Irkutsk, met in 1998 when Aslamova traveled to Viivikonna with her daughter, a permanent resident in Estonia.
Aslamova says she was quickly taken with Eistre.
"I liked him from the very beginning and we started meeting with each other," said Aslamova, adding that Eistre has a calm character and is not afraid of hard work. "When I left he would ask my daughter when I was coming again."
Aslamova returned to Estonia last August, accepted Eistre's marriage proposal and the couple were soon wed.
In the fall Aslamova applied for a residence permit in the nearby town of Sillamae.
Eistre said he was shocked when officials from the department, some of whom he knows personally, invited him to their office and berated him.
"They started to shout at me and asked me how much I was paid to stage a fictitious marriage with a woman from Russia."
Eistre was indignant.
"I married under my own free will," he told The Baltic Times. "I am an old man and I want to live in a homey atmosphere. I need care and someone to communicate with."
Aslamova's residence permit was rejected.
She returned undaunted to Irkutsk and sold her apartment. She returned to Estonia in December in time to spend New Year's Eve with Eistre.
In January the couple again applied for a residence permit, this time through the citizenship and migration department office in Narva.
Department officials interviewed the couple individually - and again deemed the marriage was a hoax.
Their evidence, they told the couple, was that Eistre could not correctly spell Aslamova's last name.
Department officials have refused to comment on the case.
The couple appealed and were interviewed again in Tallinn. Eistre said he became irritated with a series of questions about how the couple met, how they spent holidays and where they would live.
When the officials asked him to sign a form, he says, he signed without reading it. He was later told that the form stated that the marriage was a fake.
The application was again rejected.
The couple's lawyer, Denis Nechayev, said the department has violated their constitutional rights by rejecting the application based on Eistre's memory.
"The officials had to take into account their age," he said. "Older people can easily get confused and nervous. Besides, Ants is Estonian, he could have bad memory for foreign names."
He added that according to Estonian civil law only a court could declare the marriage void.
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