Jeremy D. Morley

In an article entitled Billionaire Divorces Spur Crackdown by China's Market Regulator,Bloomberg cites a “rising number of divorces among China's wealthy tycoons” amid concerns that divorce is being used in China as a device to split large stockholdings and uncertainty as to the potential impact of the new rules on financial disclosure in divorce cases in China that I recently described.

Relying in part on my input, the article explains that,

“Legal experts expect more eye-catching divorces in the near future as a law effective Jan. 1 — intended to protect women — will force both sides to disclose their assets in divorce proceedings. That could help uncover more assets — namely salaries, investments, inheritances and real estate — that tycoons would prefer to keep quiet….

“Most of China's wealthy have not yet adopted prenuptial agreements, as many marriages were sealed before couples got rich. China's wealth boom began when it started to embrace the market economy in the late 1970s.

The new rule on disclosure could push Chinese executives to take more precautions like signing prenups before marriage, said Jeremy Morley, a lawyer specializing in international family law. Some local courts in China have already begun adopting asset disclosure this year, he said.

“That's going to have a gigantic impact on the division of wealth upon divorce,” Morley said.”

See my article on this issue. We work on such matters in collaboration with counsel in China.