Husband Caught Cheating On Wife; Still Got Half Of His Dead Mother-in-law’s Wealth After Divorce --How And Why?

In a strange and peculiar divorce case in China, a man was caught cheating by his wife, but ended up inheriting his mother-in-law’s instead.

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New Delhi: A Chinese man's divorce case, where he cheated on his wife but got half of his late mother-in-law's estate, has sparked social media debates. A woman in China's Zhejiang province was out for walk with her mom, during which she saw her husband walking hand-in-hand with his mistress, which led to altercation between the spouses. 

The man's mother-in-law had died from a heart attack during the confrontation that her daughter and son-in-law had in public, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

According to a City Express report, the couple is from Zhejiang province and has been married for 20 years. After the death of her father, the woman's mother's health deteriorated. One day while taking her mother for a walk, the woman unintentionally ran into her husband, who was shopping with another woman. The enraged wife confronted her husband and an argument broke out between the couple. When the mother-in-law tried to intervene, she suffered a heart attack and passed right away, according to South China Morning Post.

The woman filed for divorce from her spouse three months later. The man swiftly agreed but demanded that the two houses she received from her mother be divided equally. The couple took the dispute to a local court. The woman lost the case because assets inherited during a marriage are considered joint property under the Chinese Civil Code. It was decided by the court that the man has equal rights over the houses that his wife acquired from her parents, reported South China Morning Post.

The situation would have been different if the mother-in-law had left a will specifying that her property be given exclusively to her daughter, according to Ye Shijuan, an official from the Zhejiang Testament Database. 

This case has sparked a lot of debate on social media. An outraged observer on Douyin said, “I am appalled and speechless! The mother died because of him, yet he still shares her property.”

“This case is likely to further decline marriage rates, although the verdict itself poses no fault,” commented another user.