An Investigation Into Reasons For Judicial Divorce Judgements For The Longhua District Court Of Haikou

With the continuous social and economic changes,marriage is becoming more and more complicated.Therefore,reasons for divorce are becoming more and more diverse alongside the complication of marriage.This investigation takes the divorce cases decided by the People's Court of Longhua District in Haikou City of Hainan Province in 2016-2017 as the object of study.It investigates the reasons for the parties to apply for divorce as well as the court's determination and the judgment in these cases.It is found that it is very difficult for the divorce cases of Longhua Court to be judged and granted divorce for the first time for most of the divorce reasons put forward by the parties.A number of cases are unable to be determined by the court because of lack of evidence or insufficient evidence.The court is especially cautious in judging gross negligence in both first or second divorce proceedings.Judging from the case materials,the main reasons that affect the judges' determination of the reasons for divorce are:the traditional concept of marriage and family and the guiding ideology of opposing indiscriminate divorce affect the court's hearing of divorce cases.It is difficult for the parties to prove evidence and the standard of court certification is high.Due to the parties'inexperience in collecting evidence,the lack of attention to the collection and fixation of evidence,and the legal privacy requirements in collecting evidence,it is difficult for the parties to obtain evidence,and the evidence that the parties can obtain is weak and typically don't reach the benchmark standard of proof.Article 32 of the Marriage Law contains "other situations leading to emotional breakdown","criteria for emotional breakdown with strong subjectivity and low operability",and the inconsistent pattern of evidence determination and unclear criteria for determining some reasons for divorce.It provides judges with greater discretion space,which makes different judges have different judgments on the causes of divorce and emotional breakdown between husband and wife.In order to improve the application of divorce grounds in judicial trial practice,to solve the problems of difficult judgment in the first lawsuit,low judgment rate of major fault acts,lack of evidence or insufficient evidence in most cases,judges need to deepen the concept of being"people-oriented" and break down inherent concepts and biases.Promoting professional level and professional skills,correctly identifying the cause of emotional breakdown and ordinary trivial contradictions will go a long way in solving these problems.When the criterion of"emotional breakdown" is not easy to grasp,referring to the criterion of "marital breakdown"is useful to exercise discretion reasonably.Through strengthening the proof ability of the vulnerable parties,themselves,reducing the certification standard of the court appropriately,distributing the burden of proof reasonably,and treating the exclusionary rule of illegal evidence differently,we can improve the proof and certification of gross fault reasons.When the evidence of the disadvantaged party is insufficient and the proof is not available,the court needs to exert its authority to investigate and collect evidence according to its authority,to play the role of a family investigator,and to strengthen the use of indirect evidence,incoming evidence and electronic evidence to form a chain of evidence to supplement the judgement evidence of divorce grounds.The purpose is to make the reason for divorce more scientific and reasonable,and to make divorce judgment more just,so as to effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of the parties in divorce proceedings and realize the substantive justice of judicial trial in divorce cases.