Like here in the West, the once-solid traditional concept of family and the institution of marriage has been placed under great stress in China; a country where, for centuries, marriage was universal and mostly permanent.

Social trends affecting the family have been directly engineered by the modern communist state in China [like the one-child policy] as well as indirectly [as in the massive urbanization push of the past five years]. Add Internet access for over a billion people and, watch the infidelity rate, along with the divorce rate, increase significantly.

Until 1994, the Chinese divorce petitioner was required to produce an employer's or community leader's endorsement before a decree would issue. Community leader translates as: the local apparatchik.

In modern China, the lid is now blown-off the divorce process. Today, if husband and wife agree, it is nothing more than a brief administrative detention.

Divorce is handled in China at the district government bureau level. Some cases only take a half hour at the dingy bureau offices and cost the equivalent of a buck and a half. Yes, that's one dollar and fifty cents.

No lawyers, of course. Property has always meant something different in communist China; property is always handled by the government in China. When it comes to divorce, China's separate property laws favor men who more often take advantage of property gifted to them by their parents, even during the marriage; such property remains the husband's separate estate under Chinese divorce laws.

America has the highest divorce rate among developed Western countries; China's divorce rate is fast-approaching ours, with 3.6 million million Chinese couples calling it quits in 2014.

The Chinese government's internal migration effort has been characterized as the largest and most profound in human history. This massive displacement has put a lethal amount of stress on millions upon millions of marriages in modern China.

Another factor related to China's increasing divorce rate is the effect of the Internet and social media on women's awareness of their rights in a divorce; not ever a topic for consideration in Mao's era and through the 1980s. Today, women initiate over half of all Chinese divorce filings.

Let's not forget, however, that China still has a component of its population adhering to Confucian-style family values and the multi-generational family structure. Divorce and separation are seen by the more mature generations as a moral failure, often caused, at least in part, by creeping Western influences.

For the young and recently urbanized, infidelity is a new-found freedom and [possibly arranged] marriages are left behind, along with their parents' village. Another factor to consider within the urbanization context is that men still cannot legally marry in China until age 22, the oldest such restriction on the planet.

So the immediate outlook is that China, along with the United States, will lead the world in the rate of divorce. This is probably not a good thing; it is a seemingly inescapable fact of life in the developed world.

Post Scripts: Apparently, we are not the only ones thinking about this topic; take a look at Helen Gao's article in the Sunday NYT from October 16, 2016. And another on the topic courtesy of The Economist from November 30, 2016.

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Post #519

Two new bills pending in the Michigan legislature attempt to address a long-perceived problem in Michigan family law: how to classify property [separate or marital] in a divorce proceeding.  This legislative proposal has judges and divorce attorneys up in arms.

The tie-barred bills, 4672 and 4673, introduced by Livonia Republican John Walsh, propose standards for the division of marital property, and comingled marital and separate property; create a presumption of non-division for separate property; and revises the procedures by which a family court could "invade" one spouse's separate property and award it to the other spouse.

In Michigan, a family court judge's power to apportion property in a divorce comes strictly from statutes; a confusing patchwork of four separate statutes, to be precise.  Because of this legislative patchwork, a significant body of common law has developed over the past 30-years addressing the classification and division of property.

Although every divorce case is decided on its own merit, the present state of divorce law allows the distinct possibility, if sufficent and compelling factors are proven, for the invasion of separate property.  The new legislation is largely viewed as making such an invasion more difficult, if not impossible.

Birmingham divorce attorney James P. Cunningham summarized the problem in a 2008 Michigan Bar Journal article, calling for legislation to "fill the gap" between the cases.  Cunningham was on the floor of the house in Lansing last week to testify as an expert about the need for this legislation and, presumably, to endorse the content of Walsh's bills.

So why such a fuss from the family court bench and bar?  First, they contend that Walsh is fast-tracking the legislation without input from their professional organizations.  Second, these groups also assert the proposed measures are grossly unfair to the non-propertied spouse.

When cornered by a reporter at the Capitol last week, a lobbist for the bills denied they were being fast-tracked but wryly noted that the family court bar was a veritable "graveyard" for good ideas.

Is this going to be a case of the rich getting richer?  The so-called "missionaries for the family" certainly think so and are determined to quash the measures; you should have seen the chatter about these bills appearing on the State Bar of Michigan's Family Law listserve...

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