A man in his 30s has come forward with an account of discovering that his wife, who told him before their marriage that she had no debt, had been concealing borrowings of nearly 100 million won ($70,000) across credit card loans, savings bank loans and consumer finance companies.
The case of a 34-year-old office worker identified as A, married for six months, was featured on the 14th on the YTN Radio program "Attorney Cho In-seob's Counseling Office."
A married his wife after dating for about a year, having met her through a friend. He said he was taken with her from the moment they met, drawn further by her warm and easygoing personality, and that he considered meeting her a great stroke of luck.
While preparing for the wedding, the two discussed the savings each of them had accumulated. His wife said at the time that she had not managed to save much but had no debt, and A proceeded with the wedding preparations believing her.
He covered the jeonse deposit for their new home — jeonse is a Korean lease system requiring a large lump-sum deposit instead of monthly rent — with his own savings and a loan taken out in his name. After the wedding, the couple agreed to cover living expenses from a joint account into which his salary was deposited.
About three months into the marriage, however, something strange began to happen. Mail addressed to his wife started arriving at their home from credit card companies, savings banks and a consumer finance company he had never heard of.
Each time A asked what the mail was, his wife brushed it off as advertising and threw it away. Then one day a call came in from an unfamiliar number. It was a debt collector working for a lender that had loaned money to his wife.
Alarmed, A demanded that day that his wife tell him the truth. After hesitating at length, she admitted that she had been in debt since before the marriage. Her credit card loans, savings bank loans and money borrowed from consumer finance companies added up to nearly 100 million won.
The greater shock was that his mother-in-law had also known about the debt. A had assumed that the money leaving the joint account each month was going into a savings plan his wife had set up. In fact, it was being used to repay her debt.
The reasons behind the debt were also hard for him to accept. His wife explained that she had spent about half of what she owed on overseas trips before the marriage, and the rest on going out with friends and buying handbags. Even so, she said she did not know how the debt had grown to that size.
"If I had known from the start that she had close to 100 million won in debt, I would not have married her," A said. "I want to know whether a marriage can be annulled in a case like this, and how an annulment differs from a divorce." He also asked, "I want to know whether I have to repay my wife's debt. Can I get back the money that has already been paid out of my salary?"
Attorney Kwak Dong-ju, responding to the case, said that hiding a large debt before marriage and lying about it could constitute grounds for annulment, depending on the extent and the circumstances. "An annulment on grounds of deception must be sought within three months of learning the facts," the attorney said.
The attorney added that a husband is in principle under no obligation to repay debt his wife incurred personally before the marriage, and that money paid out of his salary from the joint account toward her premarital debt could be raised for settlement during the division of marital property.