April: Divorces Reach 84% of Marriage Applications in This City!

Divorces Reach 84% of Marriage Applications in This City!

While summer is still over a month away, it seems like the divorce season is already in full bloom.

After officially reopening its doors since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Marriage Registry Office of Shenzhen has reported a significant increase in divorce applications this year, reaching 84% of the total number of applications (including marriage certificates). 

This is partly due to the epidemic, during which everyone stayed home and, as one might expect, couples ended up fighting a lot more than usual. You would think that this extended time home allowed people to spend more quality time with one another and become even closer, but things look to have shifted the other way.

Unemployment and wage cuts have also taken a big toll on much of the Chinese population, which, consequently, has created a lot of emotional distress, some of which reportedly led to domestic violence.

Before the outbreak took over the country, Yang Fang, 48 years old, thought she was living the same life as most middle-aged women and felt content. Or she thought she did. It all changed when her family began living together, day in and day out, during the pandemic, when she observed her husband more closely. “He’s always with his phone,” she shares. “We’re both under the same roof, yet we have almost nothing to say to each other.”

One day, she decided to check his phone while he wasn’t paying attention and found out that he had been cheating on her for 10 years! After confronting him about it, he confirmed that he’d been wanting to break their marriage, and proceeded with continuing to message the other woman. That’s when Yang made an appointment with a divorce agency at the end of April. “If we hadn’t had this outbreak, I wonder how much longer I would have had to endure this unsettling marriage,” she pondered. 

Yang was not alone. 

In April, the number of divorces skyrocketed to 3,524 (including 10 involving foreign residents), while marriage applications reached 4,187 (including 27 involving foreign residents).

While many of those divorces are legitimate, a new trend has been steadily growing, known as “policy divorces” whereby couples resort to “fake divorces” in a ploy to avoid paying taxes and receive preferential mortgage rates.

Regardless of the reasons, we hope the rest of the year will celebrate love in abundance and more meaningful ways.

Source: nsdaily

Editor: Crystal H

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