On The Legal Nature Of China's Contemporary Betrothal Gifts

Betrothal gifts, a particular social phenomenon and a marriage custom in China for several thousand years, is deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture and is very common in China. Especially in rural and under-developed areas, sending betrothal gifts during an engagement is the most common and a customary procedure before a marriage. It owns deep social historical and cultural origin. Now that sending betrothal gifts during an engagement has been a common phenomenon, a large number disputes on betrothal gifts have taken place and are different and various. As a result, having a correct understanding and treatment of disputes on betrothal gifts play an important role in the safeguarding of the legal rights and interests of the litigants, the preventing of intensification of contradictions and the stability of the society. However, disputes on betrothal gifts is not a central issue of conjugal laws, but is inevitable in real life. At the same time the present marriage law does not clearly stipulate disputes on betrothal gifts. There is only one judicial interpretation of the Supreme Court in respect of this aspect[1], so it is difficult to handle all cases on disputes about betrothal gifts. It is far from enough to correctly dispose plenty of disputes on betrothal gifts return from the practice of law, so it is hard to handle similar cases in a fair and just way and is unfavorable to build up a harmonious society. This paper is to illustrate legal issues related with betrothal gifts on the basis of the analysis of two typical cases on disputes about betrothal gifts and analyzes the existing disadvantages of the law on betrothal gifts return and finally put forward the suggestion of perfecting the law of betrothal gifts in order to lead to a further discussion on it. As far as this aspect is concerned, this study undoubtedly has important academic and practical significances.The paper includes five parts. The first part firstly narrates the understanding of the legal nature of betrothal gifts from the angle of famous jurists in the Mainland and Taiwan. Secondly, this part introduces two cases on betrothal gifts to return and some legal questions related with this two cases and reflected focus questions, introducing the phenomenon of betrothal gifts at the places of the occurrence of the cases in order to have a more complete understanding of cases.The second part introduces the meaning of betrothal gifts and its character and the difference among the mercenary marriage, obtaining property by marriage and gifts during marriage, narrating the history of betrothal gifts and its social influence.The third part analyzes the legal nature of betrothal gifts and introduces several theories on the nature of betrothal gifts, including: (1) Ownership transfer said; (2) From the bond says; (3) Card agreement jin said; (4) Purpose donative said; (5) Subject to obligations donative said; (6) conditional gifts says.This paper agrees with conditional gifts and thinks that betrothal gifts are donative behavior subject to a condition subsequent. At the same time, this paper talks about the nature and return of betrothal gifts under modern law system.The fourth part discusses the existing deficiencies in the regulation on betrothal gifts to return and analyzes cases in this paper on the basis of the previous discussion. The fifth part explores the significance of the law of betrothal gifts and its followed principles and puts forward the suggestion on the perfection of the law on betrothal gifts.