Modern marriage has the illusion that as long as you love each other, you can get married.
When marriage is regarded as a sacred contract for human beings, it is blasphemous and offensive to speculate and consider too much about the benefits of married life in advance.
However, the reality is that too many romantic and moving love stories end in embarrassment and embarrassment. The passion faded, and the problems hidden behind the "love" slowly erupted after marriage, leaving a chicken feather.
As one of the relatively few full-time marriage lawyers in the industry, Liu Shengfei has been dealing with unhappy marriages for many years. In the past 15 years of practice, Liu Shengfei has handled more than 1,000 cases, and has long been accustomed to the ugliness of human nature and the absurdity of reality.
The skyrocketing divorce rate continues to disenchant marriage and subvert people's imagination of marriage in the past. Liu Shengfei believes that everyone should not rush into marriage, and understand the necessary legal knowledge in advance to prevent the possibility of misfortune.
How to avoid running out of money in marriage? Do gifts need to be returned after a breakup? How to establish a stable and secure marriage relationship based on economic interests?
Here's his statement.
Now it is clear that women are more resistant to marriage and childbearing.
There are many reasons, mainly because the law and modern culture also have many regulations that are unfavorable to women. For a simple example, even if a man is a full-time daddy, as long as he wants to get out of the family, whether it is workplace pressure when making a living or social pressure when remarrying, men will be relatively smaller.
And those stay-at-home mothers who have been out of touch with society for more than ten years, if they want to divorce at this time, their ability to take risks will become very weak. On the one hand, men value the balance of interests and do not give up interests easily. On the other hand, women have to overcome greater obstacles if they want to return to the workforce and fend for themselves.
Various factors lead women to take greater risks in marriage. As a result, they are more cautious when faced with life decisions.
Liu Shengfei is training cadres of the Women's Federation
I have a very impressive client named Liu Juan. She was originally one of the few female college students in the town, graduated to become a university teacher, worked decently, and envied others.
But in 2008, her cousin returned home from Shenzhen, and the wonderful, high-paying life in the special zone prompted Liu Juan to resign nakedly and start a deep drift.
At the age of 26, Liu Juan entered a factory owned by a fellow township boss through her cousin's introduction and became a clerk. Three months later, the boss Cai Kun unexpectedly confessed to Liu Juan.
Although Cai Kun is divorced and has a baby, she is 15 years older than her, but she graduated from a first-class university and is worth tens of millions. This is a great recognition for Liu Juan, who has just come to the big city to work hard. The two fell in love and soon entered into marriage.
At first, the Liu family did not agree to Liu Juan's marriage, they thought that the door was not right, and they were worried that Liu Juan would be bullied in the future. But Liu Juan indulged in Cai Kun's sweet words and firmed up her choice.
Cai Kun took 50,000 yuan to raise his relatives, Liu Juan's parents sighed for a long time, symbolically collected 2,000 yuan, and the rest were all refunded. The two did not hold a wedding, did not take wedding photos, and quietly received the license.
Soon, Liu Juan's parents' worries became a reality, and Liu Juan, who seemed to marry into a "wealthy family", was full of pain and anxiety in her life.
Cai Kun's family did not welcome Liu Juan. The mother-in-law and sister-in-law believed that Liu Juan's marriage was covetous of the Cai family's property, and often excluded and insulted Liu Juan in gossip.
Liu Juan complained to Cai Kun, but Cai Kun in turn asked her to respect her elders and not to aggravate family conflicts. At that time, the two had a daughter, and Liu Juan chose patience.
In order to please her family, she continued to conceive a second child. When the baby was born and the doctor told her it was a boy, Liu Juan screamed and confirmed with the doctor three times before fainting.
Liu Shengfei's old photo
Cai Kun is old and has a son, and he loves his younger son very much. Despite this, Liu Juan's family status has not changed. To make matters worse, Cai Kun's attitude towards Liu Juan has also changed.
Cai Kun not only verbally called Liu Juan a "neurotic" in public, but also abused during the same room. At the beginning, Liu Juan reviewed her inconsiderate husband and had no fun. But Cai Kun went further, and on the evening of August 20, 2020, violently tore Liu Juan's pajamas, leaving obvious purple-red scars on her body.
At this time, Liu Juan realized that this was domestic violence.
In just ten months, Liu Juan suffered three more serious domestic violence. In the most serious case, Cai Kun chased Liu Juan from upstairs to downstairs, wounding her chest. She was then dragged several meters and slapped against the wall.
Liu Juan couldn't bear it anymore, and with the evidence of domestic violence collected, she contacted me and filed for divorce from Cai Kun. Unfortunately, the outcome of this case ended up being a regret for me.
The most easily accepted evidence of domestic violence in the court is three major items: documentary evidence after calling the police, medical records on the day, letters of repentance, guarantees or audio recordings and chat records that the other party admits to beating people.
Liu Juan prepared the above types of evidence, but it was all circumstantial. After calling the police, the police station verbally replied, there was no record file, and the photos and videos did not capture the image of the beating.
When the verdict came out, Liu Juan lost the case.
We and Liu Juan's family did not give up and decided to sue a second time, but Liu Juan hesitated. During the litigation, Cai Kun frequently made moves to accuse Liu Juan of embezzling public funds and falsely issuing VAT invoices. Coupled with the successive summonses from the police station, Liu Juan's spirit was greatly troubled.
The result of the failed verdict became the straw that crushed Liu Juan. Confined to the emotional dependence of Cai Kun, she finally listened to the sweet words and decided to return to the family.
Men and women present different patterns of thinking, causing both parties to make different choices when faced with an unhappy marriage.
For the most part, men are rational. Maintain a state of superficial non-divorce, so that he is more decent to the outside world and his life is not affected. Women are emotional animals, and she cannot continue to live indifferently without feelings.
As a result, the majority of clients who require us to provide legal services are women.
I studied economic law at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law with a bachelor's degree, and a master's degree in litigation law at Sun Yat-sen University. After leaving school, my job was to provide legal services to enterprises, and the opportunity to become a marriage lawyer was closely related to my wife Li Xiang.
It was in 2017, Li Xiang and I were newly married Yan'er and had a daughter. One day, Li Xiang suddenly received a court summons, and her ex-boyfriend Lao Chen demanded that she return a bride price of more than 2 million yuan, including the down payment of the house and the purchase price.
A peaceful life makes waves.
Liu Shengfei and Li Xiang
The starting point of Li Xiang's story is similar to Liu Juan's. When she was in graduate school, her father's business failed and the family was saddled with huge debts. To support herself and her sister's academic expenses, she had to work several part-time jobs a week.
A parent of a student felt sorry for Li Xiang and introduced the rich old Chen. Old Chen is old, but he has an excellent career and has given great support to Li Xiang's family in terms of material.
Li Xiang sank into it, extremely happy, and his life centered on Lao Chen. After graduation, her sociological expertise and foreign language skills came in handy to become Lao Chen's assistant, secretary and translator.
Once, Li Xiang accidentally learned in the wine bureau that Lao Chen had already started a family. Although she was embarrassed and angry, she was persuaded and agreed to give Lao Chen half a year to divorce.
In this nondescript relationship, Li Xiang became more and more insecure and asked Lao Chen for divorce many times. Old Chen coped easily, first bought a house for Li Xiang's mortgage loan, and then gave various promises to easily control this girl who was not deeply involved in the world.
Half a year later, Lao Chen did not produce a divorce certificate, and Li Xiang resolutely fled and fled thousands of miles away - in Guangzhou, as a college teacher.
Unexpectedly, Lao Chen did not give up and took the initiative to buy a car and send it to Li Xiang. Soon after, Lao Chen showed her the divorce certificate, and the relationship between the two was as good as ever. However, Lao Chen was reluctant to give her an official title.
Young women who are deeply caught in the whirlpool of feelings can always find reasons to convince themselves that the man in front of them is dead set on giving and making up all kinds of dramas - "he must have been hurt too deeply by his ex", "he must want to make his career brilliant and start a family with himself"... Use this to excuse the other party.
The days of screwing lasted for nearly two years, until once the two met to visit Australia, Lao Chen lost contact before departure, Li Xiang was disillusioned, and broke up completely.
Not long after, Mr. Chen was imprisoned for land requisitioning work. Nine months later, Li Xiangcai met Lao Chen in a café, and she took the initiative to return the down payment for the house and the money for the car to him.
Lao Chen refused, hoping that Li Xiang would give him another chance. Of course Li Xiang disagreed, and at this time we had already established a romantic relationship.
Liu Shengfei and Li Xiang play
We all thought it was the end of the story and starting a new life with each other. Unexpectedly, four years later, Lao Chen reappeared.
This time, Lao Chen changed his face.
He settled the accounts one by one and demanded that Li Xiang repay his past expenses, totaling more than 2 million. The problem is that most of the money he spent on Li Xiang is only a down payment of more than 180,000 yuan for a house and a car fee of 160,000 yuan, with a total price of only 350,000 yuan.
Based on the evidence he submitted to the court, we found a composition of 2 million. During the relationship, Li Xiang once lent his bank card to Lao Chen to use. Lao Chen also counted more than 1 million yuan of his expenses on Li Xiang's head.
The law does not ask the reason for the breakup, as long as the two break up, the funder can claim the dowry money back through the lawsuit.
Do large gifts in love (in judicial practice, more than 10,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan as the standard), do they need to be returned after breaking up? The law tends to protect funders.
The law counts large gifts as "marital property", that is, "bride price" in the legal context. Among them, the judge does not ask the reason for the breakup, as long as the two do not get married, the expenses meet the standards, and the funder can claim it back through litigation.
The law was enacted to prevent the risk of fraudulent marriage. But this creates another possibility, where men use money and legal loopholes to play tricks on women.
At present, there may be only one way to break the situation, and women raise their awareness of legal risks. Before accepting a large gift, confirm with the man, for example: If I receive this huge amount of money from you, will I ask me to return it to you in the future?
From the beginning, we were willing to return the property that Lao Chen deserved at the original price, but he held on to the mentality of luck, and the lion opened his mouth. Later, we produced complete evidence, overturned his charges, and settled for 350,000 yuan.
Liu Shengfei and Li Xiang attended the event
This case touched me a lot - women are so vulnerable to marriage laws.
Li Xiang is a woman with a strong personality and a fierce work. But during this time of being entangled by my ex-boyfriend, the Li Xiang I admired obviously seemed to be a different person.
When we first received the summons, our child was under one year old and had not yet been weaned. Li Xiang was so anxious that he couldn't sleep, and ran around to collect evidence, resulting in abnormal milk. She was particularly concerned that gossip in the industry was enough to destroy our existing calm.
Li Xiang has a husband who is a lawyer, and his knowledge and communication skills may exceed 90% of women. Such independent women, when encountering marriage disputes, are still miserable, not to mention other inexperienced women.
I witnessed what happened to Li Xiang, but I knew that I couldn't really empathize. She must have suffered much more than I felt.
Frankly speaking, I once looked down on marriage lawyers and thought: the law is about fairness and justice, how can it be related to chicken and dog marriage?
After experiencing the wife's incident, I realized that women are disadvantaged before the rules of marriage, and they urgently need the services of professionals.
In 2018, I tentatively operated a short video platform to popularize legal knowledge, but I did not expect to be recognized by many netizens. Later, Li Xiang and I formed a team to undertake business in marital disputes, and even published a book called "Divorce Lawyers Know".
Due to my family of origin, I am no stranger to divorce.
I was born in Wuzhou, Guangxi in 1982. There are seven siblings in the family, and I am the eldest man. The parents had a harmonious relationship, so our seven children did not develop bad habits and grew and developed more than most people in the village.
But when it comes to our generation, marriage performance is different.
The eldest brother got married, divorced, remarried, experienced two marriages, and gave birth to four children. The third brother divorced once, and after the ex-wife took his daughter away, the father and daughter no longer saw each other. The fourth and fifth brothers are not divorced, but there are often crises in their marriages and we need to mediate. As for the two older sisters, the eldest sister has been divorced twice.
Since I was 10 years old, I have been in frequent contact with the love, marriage, and divorce of my brothers and sisters, and I have seen my nephews and nieces change with adults, and their temperaments have been affected as a result.
Because the seven brothers and sisters have a good relationship, I also have a deep understanding of what happened to them. These special experiences may also be the potential reason for me to become a marriage lawyer, and I am more empathetic and empathetic to the misfortunes people suffer in marriage.
Liu Shengfei's old photo
There are two main forms of divorce, divorce by mutual agreement and divorce by litigation.
The former is negotiated by both parties, which is more efficient, and after the Civil Code takes effect in 2021, there is an additional cooling-off period for divorce, and the difficulty of divorce has greatly increased. The latter is a dispute between the two parties that cannot be negotiated and can only be resolved by law. In recent years, the courts have tended to be conservative and do not grant divorce lightly.
In any case, when a divorce is negotiated, both parties are in a state of game. This process allowed me to witness too many dark sides of human nature.
Xiaoqian is a demolition family in the suburban countryside, and Ah Hui is a rich second generation with similar families, and the two met and fell in love in high school. When Ah Hui went to study in New Zealand, he still spent dozens of hours a month and traveled 8,000 kilometers to return to China to meet Xiaoqian.
Later, the relationship between the two became weak, but because Xiaoqian was pregnant, Fengzi got married. Xiao Qian originally thought that the child could save love, but not long after, Ah Hui took the initiative to confess that he liked the female colleague of the unit.
Xiaoqian said that she can never forget in her life that she did the pregnancy and birth examination alone, went through the hospitalization procedures alone, went to the delivery bed alone, recuperated in the confinement center alone, and went through the discharge procedures and the child's birth certificate alone.
More than a month after the birth of the child, Ah Hui never came to visit. We later learned that he was busy preparing for divorce. How sweet the two were before, how indifferent they are now.
One of Ah Hui's accusations against Xiaoqian is to suspect that the child is not biological. In order to avoid being seen by the passing judge showing his fatherly love for the child and affecting the outcome of the trial, when the two sat back to back in the courtroom reception hall, their own daughter suddenly cried, and passers-by heard the sound and looked over, but Ah Hui did not even move his head.
At that moment, I was full of emotion: litigation is a ruthless war of interests, and the harm to each other's feelings will make people doubt life.
On the issue of child support, the two could not agree on it. Xiao Qian did not agree to the divorce and deliberately dragged out time, not wanting Xiao San to succeed.
The judge suggested that we accept the mediation plan of up to 3 million yuan, but Xiaoqian refused. She insisted on a mediation package worth a total of 9.2 million yuan, "I know he won't say yes, but I won't lower the standard." Even if he doesn't give child support, I can give my daughter a decent life. ”
For Xiaoqian, who also has a well-off family, dignity is more important than money.
Ah Hui initiated the second lawsuit for divorce, and the mediation plan was 3,000 yuan per month.
His main business is non-staff personnel in government units, and his fixed monthly income is only 2,700 yuan. According to the law, the maintenance fee due to Xiaoqian is usually 20%-30% of the party's fixed income, with a maximum of 1,500 yuan. In other words, Ah Hui gave more than the court would sentence.
At this moment, Xiao Qian's choice was beyond everyone's expectations, "I can't accept 3,000 yuan of alimony." I can agree to divorce without any alimony from the man, provided that I change my daughter's last name to mine. ”
The maintenance fee for 18 years is calculated according to 3,000 yuan per month, a total of 648,000 yuan. Xiaoqian used 648,000 to buy her daughter's surname rights and her own dignity.
When you are in love, you are everything. When you don't love, kick you away. Cases like Ah Hui's, extreme, but not uncommon.
In our lawyer's view, instead of having illusions about the sacredness of love, it is better to take the initiative to protect our rights and interests through the law.
Men earn money to support their families, and women to teach their husbands and children, which is the division of labor in traditional marriage.
With the rise of the market economy, the traditional model of distribution of rights and obligations is no longer applicable. The division of labor between husband and wife has been extended to more permutations and combinations. Therefore, I think that contract marriage is more suitable for modern families - through premarital negotiation, black and white records, reduce the hidden dangers of disputes after marriage.
Prenuptial agreements have developed to the present, which are no longer as rigid as the public imagines, and the time can be specific to before childbirth, after childbirth, and the first year of marriage.
In terms of content design, there is also more room for play. For example, if the other party does not cheat or other behavior that you cannot accept, you will give property. And vice versa, if the other person has any behavior that you do not accept, what price the other person must pay.
Liu Shengfei is training the Women's Federation
Many lawyers believe that loyalty agreements have no legal effect, and this is probably true. However, after several years of practice and exploration, we can achieve the legal effect of "disloyalty will pay a price" through other clauses, such as moral damage compensation clauses.
The specific situation can be adjusted on a case-by-case basis. In essence, we hope to give more people the confidence to leave marriage or increase the courage to enter marriage.
Last year, a couple contacted us to sign a prenuptial agreement.
The man's income is high, with a monthly income of 50,000 or 60,000 yuan, while the woman's income is low, but her family is good. They are about to get married in Guangzhou, but due to the difficulties of the man's family, they cannot contribute to the down payment of the marriage house, and the two parties agree that the woman's family will pay more than one million down payment, and the man will bear the mortgage.
The woman's family has more property, and it stands to reason that if a prenuptial agreement is to be signed, they are the first to do so. Interestingly, this time the man took the initiative to sign a prenuptial agreement, he did not want to leave the woman with the suspicion of his own money, "I have the ability to provide you with a good life in the future, but I can't afford to pay the down payment now." ”
This case is like a ray of light that illuminates the prospects of contract marriage. More meaningful than a prenuptial agreement is that the beneficiary takes the initiative to sign a prenuptial agreement to jointly protect the interests of both parties.
No matter what class, net worth more than 100 million, or ordinary people, entering marriage is inevitable.
Every marriage scandal in society punishes men and women who yearn for love. Perhaps, we have found a more scientific and more long-lasting concept of contract marriage.
Here again, we can see love in its purest form.
*Illustrations provided by interviewees