A local Beijing newspaper recently carried a very telling cartoon.
It pictured two people standing in front of a clergyman just about
to tie the knot and a registrar beside the couple saying: “Wait,
the wedding ring hasn’t been notarized yet.”
Property notarization is no longer new in China. A survey of young
people in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai conducted in 1996 showed
that 65 percent of them would be willing to sign a deal before
marriage to avoid any problems in connection with property if they
later divorced.
Mr
Zhang and Ms Liu were married on November 28, 2000. The day before
the wedding ceremony, they went to the Changchun Notarization
Office to fill in a property settlement form.
“This is the second marriage for both of us,” said Zhang. “My
ex-wife and I had a quarrel about who owned what when we divorced,
so this time, my bride and I have agreed to sign a contract
beforehand, just in case.”
However, getting people to make pre-marital property settlements
has not always been an easy task. Chen Xiaojuan, a registrar in the
northeastern city of Changchun, used the word “arduous” to describe
the task.
“Two or three years ago, people thought it was a ridiculous thing
to do,” said Chen. “Chinese couples have long had the concept that
they will be together for the rest of their lives after they marry,
so they think it is not important to make it clear from the outset
whose is whose.”
Things have changed. The Shanghai Notarization Office handled 457
pre-marital property notarization cases last year, compared to only
20 in 1993.
Official figures show that about 9 million couples get married each
year in China, some 450,000 couples get divorced after mutual
agreement and about 7,000 couples end their married lives in the
courts. The number of difficult divorces and the disputes and
fights erupting during divorce proceedings have made people aware
of the importance of pre-marital property settlement.
Related statistics show that in Chinese cities, an increasing
number of couples have signed pre-marriage property settlements.
Local notarization offices in Changchun dealt with more than 100
such cases in 2000.
The rise of individual incomes and higher education levels may soon
mean that people start to accept the concept of a pre-nuptial
contract.
(Xinhua 01/09/2001)