A marriage between a senior-high school student surnamed Lai (賴), who died just hours after getting married, and a man surnamed Hsia (夏) was a legally invalid, potentially affecting Hsia’s claim to NT$500 million (US$16.93 million) in real-estate assets owned by Lai, the Taichung District Court ruled on Wednesday.
The decision, which can be appealed, was made in response to a civil suit filed by Lai’s mother, the court said.
If the ruling is upheld, Hsia would lose the right to inherit the real-estate assets, it said.
Photo: Chang Jui-chen, Taipei Times
Lai and Hsia did not show “any mutual admiration for each other before the marriage” and “interactions between the two were distant and unfamiliar,” it said.
The court said it was unable to determine that Hsia and Lai had the “true intention of establishing a permanent union with intimacy and exclusivity,” and ruled that the union “lacked the essential requirements of marriage.”
The case follows Lai’s death on May 4, 2023, after he fell from Hsia’s 10th-floor apartment just two hours after the marriage was registered.
The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge Hsia with murder, given that there were no signs of trauma or traces of poison or alcohol in Lai’s body.
Hsia was indicted in June 2023 and in June last year was sentenced to 18 months in prison for forging documents that caused a civil servant to “make a false entry in public records” in connection with the marriage registration.
The court found that Hsia, who was 26 years old at the time, did not marry Lai, 18, for genuine reasons, but to obtain access to the real-estate assets Lai had received from his father earlier that year.
Lai’s mother later filed the civil suit seeking to formally annul the marriage.
Eight Chinese naval vessels and 24 military aircraft were detected crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait between 6am yesterday and 6am today, the Ministry of National Defense said this morning. The aircraft entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern air defense identification zones, the ministry said. The armed forces responded with mission aircraft, naval vessels and shore-based missile systems to closely monitor the situation, it added. Eight naval vessels, one official ship and 36 aircraft sorties were spotted in total, the ministry said.
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) today said that if South Korea does not reply appropriately to its request to correct Taiwan’s name on its e-Arrival card system before March 31, it would take corresponding measures to alter how South Korea is labeled on the online Taiwan Arrival Card system. South Korea’s e-Arrival card system lists Taiwan as “China (Taiwan)” in the “point of departure” and “next destination” fields. The ministry said that it changed the nationality for South Koreans on Taiwan’s Alien Resident Certificates from “Korea” to “South Korea” on March 1, in a gesture of goodwill and based on the
The Ministry of National Defense yesterday reported the return of large-scale Chinese air force activities after their unexplained absence for more than two weeks, which had prompted speculation regarding Beijing’s motives. China usually sends fighter jets, drones and other military aircraft around the nation on a daily basis. Interruptions to such routine are generally caused by bad weather. The Ministry of National Defense said it had detected 26 Chinese military aircraft in the Taiwan Strait over the previous 24 hours. It last reported that many aircraft on Feb. 25, when it spotted 30 aircraft, saying Beijing was carrying out another “joint combat
RSS