Ending a De Facto Marriage

A de facto marriage (사실혼) is a relationship in which both partners intended to marry and lived a shared life that society would recognize as a married couple, but never filed a marriage report. Having lived together for a long time is not enough on its own; the key is whether you treated each other as spouses and were known to others as a married couple.

There is no rule on how many years you must live together for it to be a de facto marriage. Conversely, even if you lived together for a long time, it is hard to be protected as a de facto marriage if it was cohabitation with no intention to marry. That is why most de facto marriage cases begin with a dispute over the nature of the relationship.

If the other partner claims you were only living together, you have to prove the intention to marry and the reality of your shared life, one point at a time. It is easier to be recognized when several pieces of material point in the same direction rather than just one.

• Photos of the meeting between the families, the wedding and the honeymoon, and wedding invitations
• Resident registration at the same address, and a lease signed together
• Accounts and card records used together for living costs
• Records of attending holidays and family events on both sides as a married couple
• Registration as a dependent under health insurance, and applications for family allowances at work
• Messages in which you called each other husband or wife, and written statements from acquaintances

Assets the two of you built through cooperation while the de facto marriage lasted are subject to property division (재산분할), whoever's name they are in. Assets owned before the relationship began are in principle excluded, but as in a legal marriage, they may be included if the other partner helped maintain or increase them.

Case law sets the assets to be divided and their values as of the date the de facto marriage ended. The 2-year rule for legal marriage is considered to apply to the claim period, so prepare on the basis that you must claim within 2 years of the date the relationship ended. The end date itself can be disputed, so keep a record of the last day you lived together and the day the belongings were moved out.

A de facto marriage can end with just one partner's notice, but if the partner ended it unilaterally without a valid reason, or broke the relationship through wrongful conduct such as an affair or violence, you can claim compensation for emotional distress (위자료). If a third party, such as the partner's parents, is responsible for the breakdown, you can also claim against that person.

A de facto marriage in which one partner has a legal spouse is in principle not protected. However, an exception may be recognized if that legal marriage was already effectively over, and if the partner lied about being married, a separate damages claim can be considered.

For a child born without a marriage report, a legal father–child relationship arises only when the father acknowledges the child (인지). If the father does not report the acknowledgment himself, a lawsuit claiming acknowledgment (인지청구) is needed, and only after acknowledgment can the person with parental authority, the custodial parent and child support be set.

Once the child is acknowledged, you can also consider claiming child support from the child's birth as past child support. Matters concerning the child proceed separately from property division, so it is a good idea to handle them together at the stage of negotiating the end of the relationship.