Chen Shi / for China Daily

A court ruling aims to make marrying couples focus on love

Ever since Hu Jingjing got married in May she has kept him on a short leash - at least financially. He has 2,000 yuan (230 euros) a month for his own use and if he finds himself running short after shouting colleagues an expensive dinner he has to dip into money at home and let Hu know so it can be recorded in her accounts. Simply put, Hu feels her husband is no good with money. Before they married, he had no savings even though he had been working for more than six years. To boot, he had absolutely no idea of where his money had gone.

"So I confiscated his bank card," says Hu, 28, an editor with a newspaper in Beijing.

She keeps a detailed record of their spending, down to the last 0.5 yuan. The couple's earnings total 500,000 yuan a year and they spend about 110,000 yuan, in addition to mortgage payments, which total 90,000 yuan.

"Money is very important to a marriage," Hu says, adding that one's quality of life should not fall steeply after one gets married.

"I remember the popular Hong Kong writer Yi Shu once wrote in her novel, 'I want a lot of love. If there is no love, I want a lot of money.' I expect at least one of them."

So love and money? Which is the most important to a marriage? Some experts say that a recent interpretation of the Marriage Law is aimed at getting people to marry for love rather than money.

The Supreme Court interpretation, which came into force on Aug 13, makes it clear that a house bought before a marriage is personal property. In the event of divorce proceedings, the money paid toward the mortgage by married partners is liable to be paid back in the same ratio.

In addition, if the parents of one of the married couple buy a house for their offspring and the property ownership certificate is registered in his or her name, the house will belong to the same person in the event of a divorce.

Over the past 10 years housing prices have soared in Beijing and elsewhere. The average price of a typical residential building in the capital reached 23,730 yuan (2,702 euros) a square meter at the end of August, according to Beijing Real Estate Transaction Management Network. For most Chinese families, houses have become their most valuable asset.

While in some quarters the new interpretation of the Marriage Law is seen as encouraging people to care more about affection than assets, some believe that despite its good intentions it cannot force people to recalibrate their moral compasses.

"Marriage is not simply about love," says Jiang Yue, a professor at the School of Law of Xiamen University and an expert in marriage laws. "It is a way of living. Can you talk about love all day but have no place to sleep? Affections and assets cannot be separated. Otherwise, why does nobody fall in love with someone who is homeless and living under an overpass?"

Mu Yan, co-founder and vice-president of Baihe.com, an Internet dating and match-making site, says that a survey of more than 100,000 single Chinese in 2009 found that for women personal income ranked third among the top three criteria in choosing a spouse. For men and women, morality and personality were the two most important concerns. Among men, physical appearance ranked third.

In another survey by Baihe.com, of 32,676 people between the ages of 20 and 60 last year, 71 percent of women respondents said owning a house was a must for a man to get married; 48 percent of male respondents shared that view. Nearly 86 percent of those surveyed selected "having a stable income" as a pre-condition to marry, followed by "having a house" (58 percent) and "having a certain amount of savings" (54 percent).

In general, marriages were much like they were 5,000 years ago, Mu says.

"In primitive societies women needed to live in caves to bear children, so men who could occupy caves were able to find wives. In today's society, housing prices are rising quickly As people, and women in particular, feel increasingly insecure, their demands for housing and financial (stability) grow."

The pressure of city living forces many people to sacrifice pure, boundless love on the altar of cold, hard reality. In the eyes of many, houses are extremely important, says Jia Mingjun, founder and partner of Shanghai Whole-Guard Law Firm.

"Our lawyers have been extremely busy answering phone calls since the Supreme Court announced the new Marriage Law interpretation," says Jia, who used to handle an average of 100 divorce cases a year, and now deals only with cases involving the rich and the famous.

"Almost all divorce cases of ordinary people involve housing. Unlike rich couples who are preoccupied with getting a share of each other's assets, ordinary couples have nothing valuable to split except their homes."

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, about 2.68 million couples divorced last year, among whom 668,000 couples went to court. Over the past five years the ranks of the divorced have swelled by an average of 7 percent a year.

To avoid legal disputes after marriage, a growing number of people are willing to enter into prenuptial property agreements. Some people consider such agreements a sign of distrust between a couple or a lack of confidence in a marriage, and Chinese have been reluctant to take them up.

Before marrying Wang Haoyu two years ago, Cui Yin bought a house in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai. The 90-square-meter house cost 1.43 million yuan, including a down-payment of 800,000 yuan.

At the time Cui, 35, bought the house, her salary as a human resources director was 10 times that of her fiance. She alone paid the down-payment, and Wang paid 200,000 yuan toward the mortgage. The couple later signed an agreement they drew up themselves acknowledging that the house belongs solely to Cui.

"My husband is very rational, so he has no objections to the agreement," says Cui, who now has a one-year-old daughter. "I don't think it will do any harm to the love between us. Besides, the house has in fact been gained by my hard work in the past."

Over the past two years the value of the house has increased 37 percent. She says that if they divorced one day - even though that was unlikely - she would keep the house and give a portion of the price appreciation to her husband in line with what he had contributed to mortgage repayments.

According to a Baihe survey of more than 2 million people in large and medium-sized cities in 2008, 44 percent were open to the idea of a prenuptial agreement; only 3 percent were against them.

As growing numbers of women become financially independent, the way couples spend their money is also changing. When Hu Jingjing talked to her friends about family finance, she was surprised to find that many couples chose to spend their money separately rather than combining their funds.

Fan Weimin, 36, a corporate lawyer who lives in Beijing, and his wife Zhou Nan have separate bank accounts. They pay for their own clothes and other everyday items. When it comes to family expenses such as groceries, electricity and household appliances, either of them will pay, although he pays bills more often than his wife.

Some of their friends have joint bank accounts to pay for frequent family expenses, but Fan believes that only leads to quarrels.

"Who is in charge of the joint account becomes an issue," Fan says. "The wife will obviously want control so she has a sense of security, but what if the husband also wants control? They then have to reach some kind of agreement."

He says that in the end who is in charge of the money is unimportant, as long as both are honest about their income and let each other know about their bank accounts.

These day, more and more couples have separate bank accounts and go halves in everyday expenses. Many still believe in love and consider mutual trust, tolerance and a sense of responsibility as key elements of a successful marriage.

"We've got to have faith in marriage, although conflicts between a couple are unavoidable," Fan says.

"Since the moment we were bonded, we have not had to face the world alone, but have someone alongside to deal with it together. It's such a warm feeling."