Shanghai lawyer proposes cooling-off period for marriage. Most people seem to love the idea

An established female lawyer from Shanghai is pitching a bold idea: Ask marriage-seeking couples to complete a “cooling-off” period before they officially tie the knot.

On Thursday, at a press conference hosted by the Shanghai Bar Association, law-firm partner Xú Shānshān 徐姗姗, who also serves as a member of Shanghai’s top political advisory body, unveiled her proposal (in Chinese) for the measure, which will be submitted for discussion during the city’s upcoming Two Sessions political meetings in the early spring. 

Xu said that the legislation would require couples looking to have their partnership legally recognized to wait a short period of time before civil affairs bureaus start processing their applications for marriage. During the so-called “cooling-off” period, to-be-wed couples would have the last chance to conduct a background check on each other and get health checkups. 

Xu explained that because there’s no mandatory policy for premarital medical examinations in China, the proposed period would give couples who are planning to get married “a little extra time” to think things over carefully and assert their rights to demand full transparency from their soon-to-be spouses.

Xu’s suggestion came close on the heels of a groundbreaking decision made by a Shanghai court earlier this month, which annulled a couple’s marriage after the wife found out that her husband concealed his HIV-positive status before they got married. The ruling was based on China’s new Civil Code, which stipulates that citizens must “truthfully inform” their significant others if they have “serious diseases” before marriage registration. 

More popular than a cooling-off period for divorce?

The Civil Code, which replaced the country’s Marriage Law on January 1, also includes an unpopular law that requires divorce-seeking couples to wait 30 days before official approval, during which time either party is entitled to withdraw their requests. Before being written into the Civil Code, the clause was a “recommended practice” in some Chinese provinces, and it was met with fierce opposition from critics who believed that the measure would leave victims of domestic violence in greater danger. 

In some ways, Xu’s proposal of a pre-marriage “cooling-off” period shares elements with the controversial one for divorcing couples, but it serves the exact opposite purpose — to encourage couples to identify and address potential issues that may put their future marriage at risk.

Since the news came out, Chinese social media has been ablaze with comments supporting Xu’s suggestion and calling for other Chinese cities to give it consideration. “Unlike the one for divorce, this proposal totally makes sense to me. It has my unequivocal support,” a Weibo user wrote (in Chinese). Others went a step further advocating for mandatory, comprehensive health checkups for to-be-wed couples.

Not everyone was in favor of the proposal, though. Some critics argued that just like the “cooling-off” period for divorce, Xu’s suggestion was essentially an infringement on the rights of couples who want to make decisions about their relationships. 

And among its proponents, the majority of them seemed to think that there’s scant chance that the proposal would ever become reality — considering how aggressive the Chinese have been in talking its citizens into marriage and out of divorce in recent years.