By Yuanyue Dang for South China Morning Post
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• Chinese divorce court orders husband who claimed he only had US$14,500 to his name to give wife huge portion of US$430,000 in hidden earnings • Ruling comes after a major law change in China which gives either party in a divorce the right to investigate the other’s financial affairs A Chinese housewife caught up in a divorce lawsuit has discovered that her husband – who claimed to have savings of just 100,000 yuan (US$14, 500) – actually earns up to three million yuan (US$430,000) a year. The case, which unfolded in Beijing, the Chinese capital, gained traction on mainland social media after details of it were reported by the Beijing Daily. A legal proceedings heard that the husband, surnamed Li, was hiding his actual assets and told his wife, surnamed Zhang, that all he had to his name was 100,000 yuan. Zhang submitted an application to the court handling the case to investigate her husband’s financial affairs. The official probe discovered that Li’s annual income amounted to more than 3 million yuan and that he had withdrawn large amounts of cash several times before the divorce proceedings. On making these discoveries the court deemed an undisclosed amount of Li’s assets to be joint in nature and ruled that Zhang should receive 60 per cent of that amount.
