The divorce dilemma(2)

Xuhui district's marriage registry opened its divorce intervention office on March 8 (International Women's Day) in 2010. The counselors here have been appointed by the Shanghai Women's Federation, most of them are professional psychologists but there are also a few retired judges.

Ms Wu, a senior staff member with the office, told the Global Times that the office is seeing more and more couples.

Wu echoed Wang's experience that many of the couples seen by counselors were acting on impulse - some wanted a divorce after just one argument or after two or three days of marriage. But there were also couples who had endured difficult relationships for many years, and there were all kinds of problems involved ranging from Internet addiction to whether to have children. "For these counselors nothing is strange any longer," Wu said.

Some of the couples come for counseling of their own accord and others have been sent by the officials handling divorces. Wu said these officials carefully observed each couple and the way they reacted - if they suspected there were problems involved they sent the couples to the intervention offices.

Stripped naked

One recent case involved an attractive young woman who suddenly stripped naked in the office in an effort to prove she wanted a divorce. Up to that stage she had dominated her husband throughout the session, telling him off, ordering him to kneel down and beg for forgiveness.

"We contacted her parents and though they admitted they suspected she was not well they refused to accept that she was quite sick. It took a lot of persuasion for us to get them to take her to a doctor," Wu said. The woman is still being treated.

Wu said that many of the people who wanted to divorce had mental illness like depression and were not always in control of themselves. "Our approach is to discover their problems and help them solve these. Whether they still want to divorce afterwards is another question, but we have to help them become mentally well so that they can make proper decisions," Wu said.

The counselors said some of the most difficult cases they handle involved highly educated professionals like university lecturers. "Because they know a lot they are overconfident of their own judgments, so it is hard to negotiate. Also, they tend to have more problems expressing themselves and controlling their emotions." According to the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, 8,098 of the people divorced last year had master's degrees and 947 had doctoral degrees.

She said counseling couldn't help if a couple attended just one 20-minute session - counseling is a long-term process. "Usually the counselors give their private phone numbers to couples and many call for advice or help at all hours, even midnight."

However, in stark contrast to Songjiang's intervention office which claims more than 70 percent of its couples decide to stay together, the Xuhui office said that only about 5 percent of those who were counseled canceled their divorce plans.

Going to court

Contested divorces bring a different range of problems. The key is in the 32nd clause in Marriage Law, which reads: "If the relationship has broken down and conciliation is impossible, a divorce should be granted."

The law details five situations that can be counted as a marital breakdown. They are: bigamy or living long-term with an extramarital partner; inflicting domestic violence continuously and regularly, or abandoning a family member; having gambling or drug habits or hiring prostitutes regularly; separation for more than two years because of relationship conflicts; or where one of the couple has been declared legally missing.

The law also lists "other situations that result in the breakdown of relationships" and these include the imprisonment of one of the couple, a physical impossibility to have sex, or where one of the partners has a prohibited disease (these include contagious diseases like AIDS or gonorrhea, serious hereditary diseases which can affect life expectancy, or serious mental illnesses) or failing to show affection.

The Global Times talked to several city divorce lawyers and they said infidelity had become a much more common reason for contested divorces. "When the people who have been cheated on ask for compensation and their spouses don't accept the amount, they have to take it to the court," one of the lawyers Zhang Meng, who has worked in the field for more than 12 years, told the Global Times.

She said whereas in the past many people endured infidelity and continued in their marriages, now they are less tolerant. "It doesn't have to be a long-term extramarital affair. Sometimes a one-time thing, if caught, can lead to divorce. This is was unlikely in the past."