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)
