Summary: A wife in Taiwan was granted a divorce because her husband stopped returning her text messages.
Charlize Theron famously broke up with unpleasant Sean Penn in 2015 by ghosting him. For anyone not familiar with the term, “ghosting” means not responding to someone’s phone calls, emails, or text messages to get rid of them instead of breaking up in person. The modern phenomenon is cruel, but the trend hasn’t stopped and is happening around the world–including in Taiwan.
After being ghosted by her husband for months, a wife in Taiwan was granted a divorce. While ghosting has become a common way to dump a short-term romance, this may be one of the first occurrences of ghosting ending a marriage.
“It appears there’s very little interaction with the plaintiff; the defendant rarely replies to the plaintiff’s messages,” the judge in the case said.
According to The BBC, the wife said that she sent her hubby multiple messages through the Line app for six months. Although the messages were marked as read, the husband never responded or only sometimes gave a reply. Adding more insult to injury, the wife told her supposed significant other that she was in the emergency room after an accident but that still didn’t prompt him to reply.
“The defendant did not inquire about the plaintiff, and the information sent by the plaintiff was read but not replied to. The couple’s marriage is beyond repair,” the Taiwanese divorce judge, Judge Kao, said.
A month after the wife’s accident, she said that her husband sent her a cold message that she had mail and gave her an update about her dog.
The family court judge saw the unanswered messages and the occasional unemotional replies and ruled that the wife had enough evidence to have a divorce granted.
The plaintiff in the case was in her 50s and her husband was in his 40s. They had been married since 2012.
BBC reported that the estranged pair had been having financial troubles too. The ghosting husband didn’t have a stable income, and his wife paid most of the family expenses, including those of the husband’s mother, younger brother, and sister-in-law. Despite being the family ATM, the wife said that everyone was “unfriendly” towards her.
But to Judge Kao, the ghosting was the final insult.
“A normal couple shouldn’t treat each other like that… The Line messages were a very important piece of evidence. It shows the overall state of the marriage… that the two parties don’t have good communication,” Judge Kao said.
Kao also revealed that the defendant hadn’t shown up to court or responded to any of the court’s requests. A move that isn’t too surprising for a ghoster.