Bella Dilemma (2013)

Bella Jung is newly divorced, but still lives in a shared apartment with her ex-husband, Martin, and her new boyfriend, Sebastian. Her sister Ines can’t understand it, but Bella thinks she can’t just abandon Martin while he’s going through a crisis without a job or money. After all, they were happy together for many years and have a nearly grown-up daughter. Sebastian is less forgiving; he would rather have Bella to himself sooner rather than later, but Martin has no intention of moving out anytime soon. Just as Bella is about to ask Martin to finally look for his own place, two of their friends are killed in an accident. The dramatic event claims everyone’s attention, and the problems in Bella’s shared apartment fade into the background for the time being. On top of that, their friends have “left” them their two-year-old child. Under the terms of their will, Bella and Martin, as the child’s godparents, are to receive custody of Tom. Bella accepts this new responsibility without discussion, which means that she and Martin will now have to raise him. The youth welfare office sees it the same way, but reserves the right to thoroughly assess Bella and Martin to make sure Tom can grow up safe and cared for with them. If there are any doubts about that in the near future, the child will be placed with a more suitable family. Bella has just started her own business and opened the massage studio “Bella’s Oasis.” Since Martin is desperately looking for a new job and spends his days pursuing one, Bella sometimes takes Tom to work with her. Martin then looks after Tom and cooks dinner for when Bella gets home. There is barely any room left in Bella’s life for Sebastian. To get some time alone with her, he practically has to kidnap her. Bella understands how he feels, but at the moment she has no other option but to keep making things work with her ex-husband and put on the appearance of a “perfect family” for the youth welfare office. Sebastian confronts Martin with the fact that he and Bella are a couple, not “just” good friends. Martin then calls it quits, gives up the fight for his wife, and moves out. Sebastian realizes he has gone too far and accepts Bella’s decision to put the child first. Since he has driven Martin away, he now has to look after Tom when Bella is busy at her studio. Business has been only so-so since the opening, and customers are scarce. Nothing seems to be going right for Bella at the moment, either at work or in her personal life: Sebastian is fed up and moves out, Martin has a job offer in Munich, and their daughter Lena, who has unexpectedly returned from Australia newly married, feels unwelcome with her husband and wants to separate from him after just four weeks of marriage. Bella even feels partly responsible for her sister Ines’s marital crisis. The hearing with the youth welfare office is coming up soon, and Bella is nowhere near having a perfect family. So she takes the initiative and tells the authorities that she can care for a child as a single mother, just like thousands of other mothers. They have no grounds to object, and Bella is granted official custody of Tom.