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Recently, we have concluded a case concerning the application for recognition of a U.S. divorce judgment filed with the Shanghai court. We would like to take this opportunity to share relevant content with you (there is a surprise at the end of this article).

# Case Brief Ms. Zhang and Mr. Wang registered their marriage with a civil affairs bureau in Zhejiang Province in April 2013. Afterwards, Ms. Zhang went to work in the United States, while Mr. Wang moved to Hong Kong for career development. The long-term separation of the two parties led to the breakdown of their conjugal affection. In 2015, Ms. Zhang filed a divorce lawsuit with the court of Texas, the United States. Through the U.S. judicial procedure, the two parties amicably dissolved their marriage via mediation. Since then, the two parties have respectively established their own families and had children in the United States and Hong Kong. In 2023, Ms. Zhang intended to purchase a property in Shanghai. During the transaction process, she was informed that her marital status registered with China's civil affairs authorities was still "married". Under such circumstance, the property to be purchased would not be deemed as her first home, nor would the corresponding housing loan be qualified as a first-time housing loan, and Mr. Wang would be required to cooperate in issuing relevant documents. Therefore, Ms. Zhang contacted us for solutions. Taking full account of the actual situation of Ms. Zhang and Mr. Wang, we proposed to adopt the approach of *application for recognition of divorce judgment rendered by a foreign court*, to retroactively recognize the validity in China of the divorce judgment obtained by the two parties in the United States in 2015, so as to confirm in China that their marriage was dissolved as early as 2015. This approach can not only address Ms. Zhang's current urgent demand, but also eliminate hidden legal and moral risks for their respective current families.

The relevant legal provisions on "Application for Recognition of Divorce Judgments Rendered by Foreign Courts" are mainly set forth in Article 288 and Article 289 of the *Civil Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China*, as well as the *Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on the Procedure for Chinese Citizens to Apply for Recognition of Divorce Judgments Rendered by Foreign Courts* (hereinafter referred to as the "Provisions"). The Provisions explicitly specify the documents and materials required for the initiation of the aforesaid procedure and the rules for the determination of competent courts. The core objective of the procedure is to persuade Chinese judges with reference to foreign judicial documents that the judicial procedure under which the foreign court rendered the divorce judgment is proper and that the said divorce judgment has entered into force.

Where foreign divorce judgments are involved, all judicial documents come from outside China. As is well known to those familiar with foreign-related procedures, the notarization and authentication process is relatively complicated and time-consuming. Therefore, we usually require that all documents be fully prepared at one time as far as possible to avoid missing or improperly prepared materials, which may lead to repeated notarization and authentication, wasting clients' time and increasing litigation costs. Here comes the first key point we would like to share: before informing clients of the documents they need to prepare, we visited the Case Filing Chamber of a competent Shanghai Intermediate People's Court in person to inquire about the required documents and matters requiring attention for cases of this type. We were informed that the court has specific requirements in its internal documents for such cases. In addition to the material requirements explicitly specified in the provisions, the applicant shall also make the following commitment in the Application: "The applicant hereby commits that the applicant has never filed any divorce litigation within China, nor has the applicant received any relevant legal documents or litigation materials regarding divorce litigation filed by the respondent within China". Meanwhile, the court explicitly stipulated that only translated versions of all foreign documents issued by three specified translation companies in Shanghai (on a definitive list) will be accepted. Such prior communication with the competent court enables more accurate follow-up operations, saves clients' time and expenses, improves client experience, and reduces our workload as well.

In this case, the divorce case between Ms. Zhang and Mr. Wang in the United States dates back many years. The clients are individuals with no legal background at all, who have no knowledge of the documents required to be submitted to the courts of China, and can barely recall the relevant procedures and details of that year. Therefore, during communication with the clients, based on our sorting of the document requirements of the courts of China and our understanding of core legal issues, we need to help the clients recall the details of the case back then to restore the entire course of events as accurately as possible. Meanwhile, to be on the safe side, we have requested the clients to retrieve all retrievable documents related to the case from the court that handled the case at that time. Before going through the notarization and authentication procedures, the clients shall first send these documents to our lawyers for review. We will sort out points of doubt based on these available documents, and conduct supplementary inquiries with the clients about relevant facts. Multiple rounds of inquiry and communication help us correct the clients' inaccurate memories, so as to avoid providing erroneous information to the judge during the subsequent court trial, which would exert adverse impacts on the outcome of the case.

The second key point to emphasize is as follows: Although the relevant provisions do not require notarization and authentication of application documents and powers of attorney, in view of the uncertainty over the details of litigation cases, on the premise of not imposing additional time and financial costs on the client, we still requested the client to have the "signature of the applicant" on the application documents and powers of attorney we drafted notarized and authenticated when going through the notarization and authentication procedures for documents issued by foreign courts. Subsequent facts have fully proved that our prior prudence was completely justified. During the hearing of this case, we witnessed that the attorney representing another similar case was ordered by the judge of the Case Filing Division to supplement relevant materials due to the lack of notarized and authenticated application documents and powers of attorney. The fellow attorney exhausted all reasonable arguments and proposed alternatives such as video link verification, but all efforts were to no avail. It is learned that the issue was finally resolved only after the client returned to China and signed the relevant documents in person at the court. In fact, this practice indicates that the court applies, by analogy, the document form requirements applicable to foreign parties in ordinary cases to applicants of Chinese nationality in such cases, which invisibly raises the threshold for our document preparation.

After all materials go through preliminary review and secondary review by judges of the Case Filing Tribunal and the Adjudication Tribunal, the presiding judge will arrange an interview to further understand the circumstances of the judicial dissolution of the marriage involved in a foreign country. Normally, the respondent is not required to attend the interview, as long as the petitioner submits complete materials and the petitioner or their authorized representative can convince the judge during the interview that the judicial procedures for the foreign divorce judgment were proper and the said divorce judgment has taken legal effect. If the aforesaid work constitutes the procedural difficulty in the judicial process of the case, the part mentioned above is the substantive difficulty in the judicial process of the case, that is, how to conduct judicial recognition of the divorce judgment when Chinese judges, Chinese lawyers and Chinese clients do not understand or are not familiar with US laws and US judicial procedures. For the Final Divorce Decree from the United States involved in this case, the first core query raised by the Chinese judge was: "Is there a validity certification document? How to prove that this document is a final and binding document?"; the second core query was: "How were these legal documents served on the other party? No signature receipt is found."; the third core query was: "Why is the hearing date left blank on the Decree? When was the hearing held? Why is the date of the judge's signature on the Decree earlier than the date on another scheduling order?", etc. Differences in jurisprudence and procedural differences between different jurisdictions are fully demonstrated in the trial of such cases. Divorce cases in the State of Texas, the United States do not require both parties to appear in person (in China, even mediation requires both parties to be present); service of legal documents in the State of Texas, the United States is not effected by the court, but via courier by the counsel of the plaintiff/petitioner or other qualified lawyers or individuals. In this case, since both parties consented to the divorce, had no children and no property to be divided, and the respondent was residing in Hong Kong, the court of the State of Texas, the United States mailed the petition for divorce, notice of hearing scheduling, Final Divorce Decree (the unexecuted version not signed by the judge) and waiver of appearance to the respondent. The respondent signed and confirmed the relevant documents in the presence of a notary public of Hong Kong, and the documents were authenticated by the Consulate General of the United States in Hong Kong, thus completing the part of the judicial procedure for the respondent. There are many other details of this kind in this case. The judge, the client and the retained counsel took into full consideration the legal provisions, judicial practices of the two countries and the available legal documents, and finally completed the whole procedure for recognition of the validity of the foreign divorce judgment. During communication with the judge, the judge mentioned the "foreign divorce judgments" from all over the world that he had tried. If China's judicial thinking and legal logic are applied rigidly and dogmatically, the procedure will be inoperable and "exist in name only". With the efficient conversion of corresponding legal instruments of the two countries by the retained counsel and the high cooperation of the client in recalling the incident and stating the facts, the judge also actively adopted flexible and adaptive approaches, ensuring procedural justice while realizing substantive justice.

On November 7, shortly after we received the court ruling confirming that the said foreign divorce judgment takes legal effect in China, the *Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents* entered into force and was implemented in China. That is, for public documents issued in China and intended for use in other Contracting States hereafter, only an Apostille specified in the Convention shall be obtained before the documents are presented for use in other Contracting States, and consular legalization by Chinese authorities and the embassies and consulates of the relevant Contracting States accredited in China is no longer required. For public documents issued by other Contracting States and intended for use in mainland China, only an Apostille issued by the issuing State shall be obtained, and consular legalization by the issuing State and Chinese embassies and consulates stationed in the respective locality is no longer required. This means that in the handling of foreign-related matters or foreign-related cases in the future, the time cost and financial cost for the circulation of international documents will be greatly reduced, and case handling efficiency will also be significantly improved.

Due to the constraints of time and length of this sharing session, many details and interesting points involved in the case handling process cannot be elaborated one by one. Colleagues who are interested are welcome to contact me for further communication and discussion. A little bonus content at the end of this article is the newly issued "Certificate of Appendices" for your reference.