Helping violence victims

The young couple in Shenzhen and Su in Beijing are both lucky as they made conscious decisions during the coolingoff period. However, many people are concerned that the cooling- off period will make it more difficult for the victims of domestic violence to divorce.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs advocated that the coolingoff period only applies to consensual divorce. In the case of domestic violence, the parties may file a lawsuit, and the court shall make a judgment on divorce. The system of divorce coolingoff period shall not apply in such cases.

However, domestic violence could be very difficult to prove in a court. In some cases, the victims are even willing to give up the joint property and custody right, eager to get rid of the violence and get consensual divorce as soon as possible. The financial cost and time for litigating a divorce will be much longer, Lü Xiaoquan, a Beijing- based lawyer at Qianqian Law Firm, told the Global Times.

Such cases may sound extreme, but there are actually many victims. In China, there is one woman beaten by her husband every 7.4 seconds on average. About 30 percent of women in 270 million families have experienced domestic violence. There are 157,000 women committing suicide every year, 60 percent of which is caused by domestic violence, according to the data released by the All- China Women's Federation.

Lü believed that the cooling- off period limits the “freedom of divorce.” The divorce decision should be made by the couples themselves, without any influence from others, and the consequences of divorce should also be borne by the two adults themselves, he believes.

Sufficient time and national statistics are required to evaluate the effect of the cooling- off period on reducing divorce rate, he said, noting that he doesn't expect the results to be as optimistic as expected.

The divorce cooling- off period will make it difficult to get consensual divorce at any time, and to some extent, it will help prevent those who want to circumvent the loan restriction policies on housing purchase and the transfer of vehicle ownership through “fake divorce,” Guo Yongfa, a lawyer from Beijing Yuecheng Law Firm, told the Global Times.