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Law targets adulterers
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DISLOYAL husbands now face pointed legal challenge and expensive bills from their wronged wives after lawmakers on Saturday passed hotly debated revisions to the marriage law prohibiting bigamy and cohabitation outside marriage.
Under the new stipulations, it will now be illegal for married Chinese to live with someone other than their spouse.
Professor Yang Dawen, who was a member of the drafting panel, told the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily that the revised article prohibiting cohabitation outside marriage was designed to outlaw the rampant practice of men living part-time with their mistresses.
Up till now, a growing army of dishonest husbands have been able to take advantage of the legal loopholes in the old version that did not foresee the revival of concubines that ceased to exist in China for decades before these husbands turned wealthy and lascivious in the last decade.
Widespread adultery has been blamed for many family breakups, and threatens social stability and the one-child policy.
Some eight per cent of respondents in a survey by the All China Women's Federation last year admitted to having extramarital affairs.
“Bigamy and keeping concubines by the country's new rich are eroding social morality, and the Party and government officials involved have also tarnished the image of the government," Xinhua quoted lawmakers as saying at the National People's Congress Standing Committee vote on Saturday.
A key revision to the law also allows aggrieved parties in divorce settlements to claim compensation from the other party in cases of bigamy, keeping concubines and spouse abuse.
Last year, 1.21 million couples divorced — a 51.25 percent increase over a decade ago.
The new law also added detailed compensation rights in divorce cases, revising a 50-year-old law that left judges unable to cope with complicated disputes over property that are now the main bone of contention.
Xinhua said the laws still might not be enough to satisfy feminists and other activists who demanded stricter curbs on adultery.
Throughout the debate since the first revisions to the marriage law in 20 years were introduced three years ago, lawmakers faced calls for draconian curbs on adultery and arguments that such laws would be hard to enforce amid China's increasing affluence and social mobility.
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the amendments with an overwhelming majority: 127 approvals, one objection and nine abstentions.(SD News)
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