For quick gain, couples turn to temporary divorces
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A recent online survey by a real estate company asked whether people would be willing to file a temporary divorce to buy a new house, with 64 percent saying they would.
Husbands and wives divorce each other temporarily to claim residencies that would grant them demolition compensation or let them enroll their children at a better school. Once their goals are reached, ex-husbands and wives remarry.
Except these temporary “fake” divorces are often all too real and final.
One man surnamed Ge in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, divorced his wife to get compensation for the demolition of his former house. When he got the money and asked his former wife to remarry him, he was refused for being lazy and addicted to gambling. Ge flew into a rage and stabbed his mother-in-law to death.
In another instance, a Fujian woman named A Zhu divorced her husband so that she could go to Taiwan to pay off debts. By the time she earned enough money and returned to Fujian, her former husband was already married to another woman.
Li Mingshun, the deputy dean of China Women’s University, told Legal Daily that such strategic divorces stem from materialistic marriages and only exacerbate problems in the marriage.
Still, despite some people calling these strategic divorces immoral, many couples say divorce is a better choice than not divorcing. The Chinese blame skyrocketing housing prices and high education costs, and an outdated household registration system often makes divorce seem desirable.
A man surnamed Li in Jiaxing divorced his wife so that his son could go to an experimental primary school near his work. With the divorce, Li was able to change his son’s hukou, or residential registration, to his company’s address so that he would not have had to pay more in the school’s tuition fees.
But Li Mingshun says these divorces destroy the sanctity of marriage and damage the credibility of public policies.
“It is a phenomenon of the market economy in which people relentlessly pursue maximum profits,” Li said. “Legislative loopholes also drive the rampant cheating.”
“Concrete policies should be made to protect the value of the marriage, which is stated in the Constitution,” Li said. “And the public should be educated with a right concept of marriage and family.”
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