[by Zhou Tao/Shanghai Daily]

Guess who are the biggest public enemies of young Chinese women these days. Some will say it's those molesters on crowded Metro trains and buses.

To be sure, this is a season when molesters are on the prowl, preying upon scantily clad beauties, but there is a bunch of normally decent and revered people that young ladies probably resent even more than the molesters: China's Supreme People's Court judges.

The judges earned their fury by introducing a judicial interpretation on August 12 into the country's Marriage Law, one that threatens to tilt the balance in favor of the husband in the event of divorce - at least that's how many young women and their sulky mothers perceive the change.

According to the interpretation, the pieces of real estate registered under the name of one party in the marriage and bought by that party's parents are personal property.

Only when the spouse of the owner manages to get his/her name registered on the home ownership papers will he/she own part of that property and be able to demand alimony equal in value should the couple split up.

Under the previous legislation, wedding apartments that are purchased by one party's parents without specifying who the beneficiaries are were deemed as joint property of married couples.

Many women at marriageable age have thus concluded that the new interpretation is intended to protect the rights of the husband, not theirs, since it's an unwritten rule in China that husbands are obliged to shoulder the onerous duty of providing a wedding apartment, possible only with great financial help from their parents.

The new interpretation has met a fierce backlash from young women and their mothers, who insist on home ownership by prospective sons-in-law as a precondition for marrying off their daughters. And after their sons-in-law show them the desired houses, the next step is to add their daughters' names to the property ownership documents in a prenup.