IDEAL LIFE GONE SOUR

THEY LIVED THE DREAM. THEN THE RI CH COUPLE DESCENDED IN TO ‘UNR ESTRAINED WARFARE’

In some ways, the couple represented the epitome of success. A few years after arriving in Canada, they founded steel companies back in Guangzhou now worth over $70 million, sunk millions into a charitable trust and funded a lavish lifestyle.

That includes an $ 8- million house and $7-million condo in Vancouver, two aircraft and hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry.

But then the marriage — and their dream life — started to crumble, the husband and wife descending into “unrestrained warfare,” a B. C. Supreme Court judge observed this month in an eyebrow-raising divorce ruling.

The wife once threw a cup at her husband, the cut needing stitches to fix; he broke into the family home with a hammer after being kicked out, later trashed their apartment in China with an axe and threatened to strangle his teenage daughter.

The husband also insisted that having mistresses was his due — and culturally appropriate — then bought his wife a $ 1- million diamond ring to try to win her back.

The acrimony even continued at trial itself, which was interrupted with “a few angry, abusive and intemperate outbursts” by the husband.

Both sides exit the marriage still very rich. But the years of turmoil, family violence and “prolific litigation” have taken their toll, leaving the couple and their three children “deeply hurt by it in various ways,” said Justice Warren Milman.

The family are identified in the judgment only by initials under a court-ordered publication ban.

As well as essentially dividing the couple’s China business assets down the middle, Milman ordered the husband, Y. Z., to stay away from his wife and children, except when one of the children consents to a meeting with an adult chaperon present. The daughters, aged 16 and 22, feel they would be at risk without a protection order, the judge said.

Milman said he is not without sympathy for Y. Z. He felt “sincere and heartfelt” pain at becoming estranged from his daughters, and his “harassment” of them was often a genuine if misguided effort to express his feelings.

But Y. Z. needs to acknowledge his role in the dismal situation, and respect his children’s boundaries, said the judge.

The lawyers for both sides said Monday they could not comment on the case, including whether appeals are possible.

Y. Z. — an engineer at a steel company — and his wife A.C. — a French-literature graduate — met in China but moved to Canada in 1997 along with his daughter, M.Z., from a previous marriage, eventually becoming Canadian citizens.

He started a steel- wool manufacturing plant in the southern China city of Guangzhou in 2001 and it rapidly became a success, allowing the family to move into a home in Vancouver’s posh Shaughnessy neighbourhood. But there were already tensions, over M.Z., who eventually was sent to a boarding school.

When their younger children became teenagers, Y. Z.’s relationship with them deteriorated as well. One said that was partly because of evidence they found of his affairs with younger women in China and his “dictatorial” manner, Milman wrote.

Violence sometimes erupted. The wife later apologized for throwing the cup, which she said was not aimed at him, though later also launched a cellphone at her husband, “this time missing the mark.”

At the family business, a quarrel led to Y. Z. punching his wife, which in turn prompted her cousin, a “burly individual,” to chase him into the company cafeteria. The cousin tackled the husband and “A.C. proceeded to slap him in front of a number of astonished employees,” said the judge.

“This incident led Y. Z. to hire his own private security guards as the war at work continued to escalate.”

With the husband asserting that his business success gave him the right to have mistresses — “which he described as being more culturally acceptable in the PRC than may be the case in North America” — his wife left, and took up with a music teacher.

The husband’s attempts to win back A.C. included buying her a diamond ring valued at $940,000, but it was to no avail.

The couple separated in 2013, when they also divided the family’s $ 20- million charitable fund. But the turmoil did not end there. When Y. Z. went to their apartment in Guangzhou and discovered the lock had been changed, he broke in with an axe, then wielded the tool “with apparent abandon,” said the ruling.

Even in the presence of a psychologist he had hired to try to find a solution to the family unrest, Y.Z. let loose at his younger daughter in Mandarin, the judge said. “He just threatened to choke me to death,” she quietly told the therapist.

THE COUSIN TACKLED THE HUSBAND AND ‘PROCEEDED TO SLAP HIM IN FRONT OF ... ASTONISHED EMPLOYEES.’