Chinese Divided Over Whether to Sign Pre-nuptial Agreement: SurveyChinese are almost evenly divided over whether couple to marry should sign pre-nuptial agreement to avoid legal disputes if they divorce, a recent survey covering 10 provinces on the revision of the Marriage Law shows.The survey, conducted by All-China Women's Federation, found that 57.4 percent out of the 4,000 respondents believe signing the document would bring negative emotional effect to their impending marriage life, if they still would take the oath. Of those surveyed, 48.1 percent were men, 51.9 percent women. According to Chinese custom, the mere mention of divorce in time of marriage is a bad omen, and thus pre-nuptial agreement with a unlucky implication used to be rather sensitive to people planning to tie the knot. However, as they are becoming ever more wealthy, they turned to more concerned with their personal possessions, and would worry others might be trying to share their fortunes through marriage, the survey report says. The survey shows 42.6 percent respondents said antemarital property should be notarized,. Before China took the reform and opening up policy in 1979, Chinese held little money after life-supporting expenditures, let pre-nuptial agreement be, the survey report explained. The survey also revealed only 36 percent rural respondents favor the property notarization, while the urban supporters reached 49.3 per cent. To the surprise of the ACWF officials, much more middle-income people favor the notarization than high-income or low-income respondents. The survey report also suggests that the increase of divorce and disputes out of it also contributes to people's inclination to pre-nuptial agreements. Statistics show that the number of divorce cases increased by an annual rate of 9.08 percent in the last 20 years, reaching to 1.199 million in 1999, with the majority of which involved property disputes. |
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