[Family] Barun Law represents a husband in a divorce action brought by his wife, who is 17 years younger than him, alleging that the marital life...

1. Case summary

The wife, who is 17 years younger than her husband, filed for divorce after 7 years of marriage, claiming that life with her husband was not interesting any more. It was difficult to point out the plaintiff's fault for the end of marriage. The husband was not at fault for the breakdown of the marriage. However, in order to exclude the establishment of a divorce based on the marriage breakdown theory, we argued for a parody of “expulsion divorce”, which resulted in the plaintiff's divorce claim being rejected.

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2. Which party did Barun Law represent?

We represented a husband who was sued for divorce.

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3. The content of litigation and our role

The wife filed for divorce after seven years of marriage, claiming that her husband had lied about his age before they got married. It was difficult to argue that the wife was to be blamed for the breakdown of marriage, and the husband was not at fault for the divoce. It was a situation where the divorce claim could be granted according to the doctrine of matrimonial breakdown. Korean law prohibits “expulsion divorce”, where a husband kicks out his wife. We argued that this prohibition should apply to not only a husband intending to expel his wife, but also a wife who wants to expel her husband, in accordance with the principle of gender equality. Accordingly, we convinced the court to dismiss the plaintiff's divorce claim.

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4. Implications

The general consensus is that it is still not permissible for a faulty spouse to file for divorce against a non-faulty spouse. However, given that the doctrine of marriage breakdown tends to be accepted, there is a dangerous situation where one spouse's claim for divorce against the other spouse may be granted if both parties are not responsible for the breakdown of marriage. We have parodied the spirit of the “no expulsion divorce” rule that has long been applied in Korean law by replacing the husband for the wife, and eventually were able to protect the husband from the adoption of the doctrine of marriage breakdown.

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□ Attorney in charge: Song Bong-jun