A husband in Taiwan filed for divorce because his wife – who opposed the split – kept demanding cash from him each time he wanted sex.
The court granted the man, known by the pseudonym Hao, a divorce because his wife, Xuan, refused to have sex with him, Taiwan television station SETN reported.
Hao and Xuan married in 2014, and had two children. He claimed she rationed sex to once a month in 2017, and then rejected him entirely in 2019, giving him no reason.
He said Xuan told their relatives that he was “too fat” and “incompetent”.
Hao filed for divorce in 2021, but Xuan promised to work on their relationship, so he withdrew the lawsuit and registered their property in her name.
However, he said Xuan continued to abuse him emotionally, and began charging a fee of NT$500 (US$15) each time he wanted to have sex or even talk to her.
Hao said by the time he sued her again for divorce this year, they had not spoken to each other for two years, only communicating via a messaging app when they had to.
They had tried marriage counselling, without success.
The judge granted Hao’s request because their relationship was “cold and difficult to fix”.
But Xuan did not want to divorce, and appealed to a higher court, where her plea was rejected.
Similar cases have been reported in Taiwan.
In 2014, a wife in Taiwan charged NT$2,000 (US$60) for sex with her husband, and also set a fee for chats and meals. She said she did so because the husband, a truck driver, made no financial contribution to the family.
Their children followed suit and said their father must pay if he wanted a conversation with them.
The couple went to the police station, and the husband agreed to give his family NT$20,000 a month (US$600).
The divorce rate in Taiwan was 0.218 per cent last year, one of the highest in Asia.
In cases where suing for divorce cites the reason as a conflict of personalities, the plaintiff needs to prove the conflict has been serious enough to impact his or her life, and that the defendant was mainly responsible for it.
In a similar case, a Chinese couple shocked social media for going Dutch on everything, from furniture costs to side dishes with restaurant meals, in two decades of marriage.
The husband sued his wife and asked her to pay him 110,000 yuan (US$15,000) worth of bills he claimed she should have shared with him. His claim was dismissed by the court.
