Women's group says marriage is far from ideal

Marriage for Taiwanese women is either made in heaven or in hell, said a lawyer and official of a women's group, commenting on two survey results done at the end of 1999.

Statistics by two women's counseling hotlines said the most frequent query is on marriage-related laws and divorce.

This means many married women are still suffering from the bias of marriage laws, said Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), an attorney and supervisor of the Awakening Foundation (婦女新知基金會).

The Taipei Awakening Association (台北婦女新知協會), operated as a Taipei branch of the Awakening Foundation, last week released statistics gathered over three years from their women's counseling hotline, called Women's 104 (女人一○四).

Among the 5,238 calls made to the hotline in the past three years, the most frequently asked question concerns marriage-related laws, and the second is marriage itself.

The statistics also revealed that 78 percent of the callers were married women. Married women feel more pain than single ones, the foundation has found.

Coincidentally , the Awakening Foundation's Civil Law Enquiry Line (民法諮詢專線) displayed similar results. Divorce-related inquires were the most frequent.

"Taiwan's divorce law operates at two extremes. On the one side, divorce is very easy to obtain as long as both sides agree to it. On the other hand, if one side disagrees, divorce may become extremely difficult to obtain because the legal conditions for divorce are very strict and it is a long and tough process to get a divorce by court verdict," Yu said.

In contrast to many Western countries where divorce laws are very strict in matters pertaining to the aftermath of divorce, such as custody, property division and alimony, in Taiwan these issues are very much neglected, Yu said.

Yu, who has been making efforts to push forward amendments to the Civil Law's kinship section regulating marriage and divorce, said women are relatively powerless under the current law, especially as regards alimony and matters of property division.

Current law states that alimony be paid only when one party is experiencing "living difficulties" (生活困難).

But the interpretation of "living difficulties" is so restricted that only women who suffer from a serious disease or are handicapped could be eligible for alimony payments.

The property division system is another pitfall for women facing divorce, Yu said. Current law states that a divorced couple's property should be divided equally. But it is too easy for people to transfer their own property to a third party and then ask their spouses to split the remaining shared property.

Yu said many such cases occurred when Taiwanese businessmen in China filed for divorce from their Taiwanese wives.

"They would usually transfer property under their names to their mainland [China] new wives and asked to split the property that had remained with their wives and kids in Taiwan," Yu said.

"Once a problem emerges in their marriages, women find themselves face-to-face with frightening alternatives," Yu said.

"Because they don't have a strong legal weapon in divorce fights, women may find their livelihood in jeopardy if they choose to get divorced. That could mean falling from heaven to hell within one night," she said.

The amendment bill to the Civil Law on alimony and property is still waiting at the legislature for review.