By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter
A woman who had an affair, because her husband was in a vegetative state, was ordered to pay 10 million won in compensation to her mother-in-law who filed a lawsuit against her seeking a divorce for her sick son.
The Supreme Court said Monday that the mother of the comatose man was legally allowed to seek the divorce, upholding lower court rulings that granted a divorce-by-proxy to the man. The court also acknowledged the prior ruling that she must pay 10 million won in compensation.
In 2005, the 53-year old forklift operator was accidently run over by a truck and has remained in a coma ever since. He tied the knot with his wife in 2004. Two years after the incident, his wife had a fight with her mother-in-law and left the house to stay with her own family. Without prior consultation with her husband's family, the wife applied for legal guardianship of her husband from the court.
A few months later, she began having an affair with another man and was later charged with adultery. On discovering her infidelity, the mother filed a divorce suit on behalf of her son.
However, the wife argued in court that there was no way to know whether or not her husband wanted to divorce her, and her mother-in-law should be not allowed to file the suit as the legal guardian of her son.
The lower court ruled in favor of the mother of the man, saying that under normal circumstances, the lawsuit can only be filed by a legal guardian, who in this case was the wife.
But they said when the marital relations cannot be maintained because of a spouse's adultery, the lawsuit can be brought by family members of an incompetent.
The court said adultery was a legitimate cause for divorce because the wife left her sick husband to move in with her own family and had an extramarital affair with another man.