She got to know the man years ago after both had divorced other people. He claimed he was a senior doctor at a major hospital in the city. Three months later, they registered their marriage.
The couple soon had a daughter, but during the marriage, they frequently quarrelled over “financial matters”, the woman said.
Every day the husband left home early in the morning, saying he was “going to work” and returned home late in the evening.
However, he never gave his wife any money. He does not own any property, neither does he have a car in his name, she said.
Whenever she asked him about his income, he changed the subject. Sometimes, they had disputes over their daughter’s education.
On several occasions, the husband was violent to his wife and she had to call the police.
The woman said as soon as she suspected her husband was lying about his job, she checked with the hospital where he said he worked, and they confirmed he was not an employee there.
Lying again, he told her he had signed an employment contract with another medical institute, even though he worked in the hospital.
When the court investigated the man’s employment situation, it transpired that neither the institute nor the hospital had hired him.
Faced with the evidence, the man confessed he had been jobless for years, and that the hospital employment document he had presented to his wife and the court was bought online.
“I lied for the purpose of contending for my daughter’s custody,” the man said, admitting that his daily living expenses were funded by his mother.
The court granted the divorce. The woman obtained custody of their daughter and the man was ordered to pay 1,000 yuan (US$140) a month towards her upbringing.
The man was also fined for “making false statements” in court, but the punishment was not revealed in the report.
Unusual divorce cases frequently make headlines in China.
In 2022, a woman in the south China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, filed for divorce when she found out her husband had married somebody else while still married to her.
He had shown the other woman a fake divorce certificate and went on to have two daughters with her.
The court not only permitted the plaintiff’s divorce request and annulled the man’s marriage to the other woman, but also sentenced him to prison for one year and 10 months for bigamy and forging a legal document.
