Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) and civic groups yesterday called on the government to reform the alimony laws in the Civil Code to protect women after divorce.
Taiwanese district courts awarded alimony to only 21 women from 2009 to 2018, or 22 percent of all female litigants suing for spousal support, she told a news conference at the legislature in Taipei ahead of Mother’s Day.
The Awakening Foundation and Warm Life Association cohosted the event.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The legal standard for awarding alimony should be based on the amount of income a spouse would have had if they did not marry, not economic hardship as currently stipulated by the Civil Code, Fan said.
Under the current law, a divorced woman who is a senior citizen, victim of domestic abuse or has a chronic condition is not entitled to alimony if she has a job earning the minimum wage, Fan said.
Ministry of Labor statistics show that 90 percent of Taiwanese women are in the workforce, while 21 percent of Taiwanese women resigned from a job to get married and 23 percent of Taiwanese women resigned from a job to raise children, she said.
In one case, a former doctor had to earn a living as an assembly line worker after divorce because her license to practice had expired, Fan said.
She received no alimony from her ex-husband, she said.
The decision to award alimony and the amount of support allocated should be based on the loss of employment opportunities or income that occurred due to marriage to uphold equity, Fan said.
Alimony is compensation to divorced women for the career sacrifices they make for marriage and not a mechanism for poverty relief, she said, citing the fourth report on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
The last time the alimony laws were amended was in 2003, she added.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS