Chinese Marriage - Traditional Divorce Process

Traditional Divorce Process

In traditional Chinese society, there are three major ways to dissolve a marriage.

The first one is no-fault divorce. According to the legal code of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), a marriage may be dissolved due to personal incompatibility, provided that the husband writes a divorce note.

The second way (義绝) is through state-mandated annulment of marriage. This applies when one spouse commits a serious crime (variously defined, usually defined more broadly for the wife) against the other or his/her clan.

Finally, the husband may unilaterally declare a divorce. To be legally recognized, it must be based on one of the following seven reasons (七出):

• The wife lacks filial piety towards her parents-in-law (不順舅姑). This makes the parents-in-law potentially capable of breaking a marriage against both partners' wills.
• She fails to bear a son (無子).
• She is vulgar or lewd/adulterous (淫).
• She is jealous (妒). This includes objecting to her husband taking an additional wife or concubine.
• She has a vile disease (有惡疾).
• She is gossipy (口多言).
• She commits theft (竊盜).

Obviously, these reasons can be manipulated quite a bit to favor the husband and his family. There are, however, three clearly defined exceptions (三不去), under which unilateral divorce is forbidden despite the presence of any of the seven aforementioned grounds:

• She has no family to return to (有所取無所歸).
• She had observed a full, three-year mourning for a parent-in-law (與更三年喪).
• Her husband was poor when they married, and is now rich (前貧賤後富貴).

The above law about unilateral divorce was in force from Tang Dynasty up to its final abolition in the Republic of China's Civil Code (Part IV) Section 5, passed in 1930.