Making way for a high-tech development zone, a village in Pukou District’s Jiangbei area is to be demolished. With that comes compensation, and with that comes divorce.
Residents of the village in Nanjing’s northern suburbs have been informed that their homes will soon be demolished in order to make way for a high-tech development zone. One form of compensation is to award each household with a 220 square metre house. However, scouring the fine print, residents have discovered that they can make an additional ¥130,000 if they split.
This loophole discovery resulted in a mass 160-person divorce that lasted only two days. An 80-year-old resident told the Nanjing Morning Post that, “everyone is doing this, [and] we will deal with other things later”.
“The villagers have been told by a law firm that if spouses obtained a divorce through court proceedings, they could get the extra compensation regardless of how long they have been divorced…The law firm is reportedly charging up to ¥15,000 to help couples in the village obtain a divorce in this way”, reported China Daily.
Each suddenly divided household now firmly claim that they are eligible for 70 additional square metres of replacement housing along with the ¥130,000 in compensation. However, local officials are well aware of the loophole and the very obvious fake divorces and it remains unclear whether any of the villagers will indeed receive any extra compensation at all.
