[Monday Column] Divorce and divorce, what is your choice?
While handling various divorce cases, I have some particularly memorable clients. These are people who are over 60 years old and come to see me saying, “I can no longer live with my spouse.” The reasons for deciding to divorce only after the children have all grown up are varied, such as the spouse's continuous cheating, domestic violence and verbal abuse, extreme pressure to save money, and the breakdown of the marriage due to conflict between the mother and father. However, in most cases, they have endured for a long time to protect their families. Recently, not only celebrities and famous people, but also ordinary couples often choose to divorce after reaching their twilight years to live their own lives by separating from their spouses. 'Graduation marriage' is a legal term. It is not a concept, but maintaining a legal marriage relationship under mutual agreement between the couple, and living each other's lives without interfering with each other's lives, literally 'graduating from married life'. Divorce is presented as an alternative to divorce, which inevitably involves a process of battle and defense, but an accurate understanding of this is necessary because it does not usually require division of property or claims for alimony like divorce, which is a legal procedure. Even if a spouse has been a housewife all her life and has only done housework, if she proceeds with a twilight divorce, both spouses can cooperate to achieve divorce. The right to claim property division for joint property is recognized, and an average of 50% of the property can be divided depending on the degree of contribution to property formation. In particular, if the other party has the right to receive a pension, according to Article 45 of the Civil Service Pension Act and Article 64 of the National Pension Act, if a person who has been married for more than 5 years divorces, he or she can claim an amount divided equally between the pension amount corresponding to the marriage period. This can be decided differently during the divorce process through negotiation and trial, so in old age when income decreases after divorce. It can serve as a living aid. In principle, the subject of property division corresponds to property formed through joint efforts during the marriage period. However, even in the case of unique property inherited by a spouse, if he or she contributed to the maintenance or increase of the property, it is advantageous to divide the property according to the degree of contribution. The right to claim alimony is the right to claim compensation for mental suffering suffered by one spouse due to the illegal acts of the other spouse responsible for the breakdown of the marriage. In Article 840 of the Civil Code, the spouse's misconduct, It stipulates six types of judicial grounds for divorce, including malicious abandonment and other serious reasons that make it difficult to continue the marriage, and alimony can be claimed in a divorce lawsuit or mediation by alleging the tort of the at-fault spouse. However, in the case of a graduate marriage, unlike the property division or claim for alimony upon divorce, since the couple maintains a legal marriage relationship, if the couple has agreed on the division of property at the time of the divorce, this is merely an agreement between the parties as a property contract during the marriage. Therefore, if details are not specified, written in ambiguous language, or not notarized, it can become the spark of another dispute in the future. If you live separately during the period of graduation and eventually get divorced, the period of marriage itself may not be recognized as the actual period of marriage. Conversely, the spouse who took advantage of the fact that the legal marriage was maintained may claim alimony by claiming that the other party violated the duty of chastity, and may be placed at a disadvantage in future divorce lawsuits. In addition, since you may become a defendant in an adultery lawsuit after dating someone who graduated from marriage, you should first think carefully about the disputes that result from graduating from marriage. Although the couple can no longer live together due to an insurmountable conflict, there may be various reasons that third parties are not aware of that prevent them from legally getting divorced. However, careful attention is needed to ensure that graduation is a happy marriage and that it does not become a means for one spouse with an economic advantage to escape.[View full article]
[Monday Column] Divorce and divorce, what is your choice? (Shortcut)