Husband Who Gave 4 Billion Won to Mistress Before Death Ordered by Chinese Court to Return Full Amount

According to The Financial News, a woman in China has managed, after a legal battle, to recover a large sum of money that her late husband had secretly given to his mistress while he was alive.
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) and other outlets on the 19th, a woman in Shanghai surnamed Shen married her husband, surnamed Jin, in 1999. The couple had one son and one daughter and had been married for more than 20 years.
While sorting through Jin’s belongings after he passed away in May 2022, Shen discovered that her husband had had an affair in the past.
From around 2015, Jin had an extramarital relationship for about seven years, during which he transferred more than 19 million yuan (about 4 billion won) to his mistress.
After learning of this, Shen and her children filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the gifts and have the money returned.
The court of first instance ruled that "a unilateral act of gifting jointly owned marital property to a third party is invalid."
The court ordered the mistress to return 14 million yuan (about 2.97 billion won) to Shen, excluding 5.4 million yuan (about 1.14 billion won) that she had transferred to Jin.
The mistress appealed, but the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court upheld the original ruling.
The court pointed out that Jin’s act of giving money to his mistress not only infringed on his spouse’s property rights, but also ran counter to social ethics and public morality.
The ruling has become a hot topic on Chinese social networking services.
Local online users reacted by saying, "The cheating husband is dead and the money has come back. Perfect," "In the end, the mistress got nothing," "This ruling is truly satisfying," and "This is exactly the kind of decision that protects public morals and social order."
newssu@fnnews.com Kim Soo-yeon Reporter