A FEW years after divorcing her husband, Wang Juan recently discovered that the man was still having a huge impact on her life by racking up huge debts in her name without her knowledge.

    Wang moved to Shenzhen to work in 2000. Due to the long separation from her husband, Zhuo Wei, the couple peacefully decided to divorce in 2011.

    However, the woman found that all of her savings across multiple bank cards had been simultaneously transferred to other accounts in September last year when the courts in her hometown forced her to pay off debts Zhuo had accrued during the time of their marriage.

    Wang flew back to Wuhan, capital city of Hubei Province, and was told by the local courts that she was responsible for more than 3.4 million yuan (US$489,600) in debt.

    The woman said that she was not aware of her ex-husband’s debts because she was busy working in Shenzhen. The courts said that they had published a notification in local newspapers to look for her, however no one informed her.

    Wang became a senior executive at a big company in Shenzhen after working hard in the city for many years. She could afford the cost to raise and educate her children until recently.

    “I wanted to save up more money so that I could send my daughter to study abroad,” said Wang, but with all 420,000 yuan of her savings gone overnight, the woman felt like all her hard work had disappeared in an instant.

    Despite how wronged Wang felt about the verdict made by the courts, China’s marriage law justified the verdict because if the loans were made during a legal marriage, the couple is obligated to pay back the loans together.

    Since her ex-husband was no where to be found, the creditors pinned their hopes for recovering the debts on her. The creditors even approached Wang’s daughter at her school and asked the girl to pay her father’s debt.

    The verdict made by the courts in Wuhan was mainly based on one article in the marriage law.

    The article explains that if a couple wants to prove that the debts accrued during their marriage were not shared, they should specify that one of the couple is solely responsible for the debt when borrowing the money, or prove that the couple has gone dutch in their marriage or that the debts were not used for their shared living.

    The above conditions are hard to meet, because it is extremely difficult to collect evidence.

    What makes Wang more miserable is that the person who brought her to the courts was actually one of her relatives. The plaintiff knew where Wang’s mother lived in Wuhan, but instead of informing her family about the trial, he applied for law enforcement.

    Wang is worried that more women or men may have suffered from the same vexing troubles, since there’s no law protecting their rights.

    (Zhang Qian)