When you receive an affair complaint

When you receive a complaint, your hands shake and you can't focus on anything. For today, just do these five things.

• Write down the date you received the complaint. If a family member received it for you, it's the date they received it.
• Mark the 30th day from that date on your calendar. That is the deadline for your answer (답변서).
• Keep the envelope, notice, complaint (소장) and attached evidence in one place. They show the case number and court division.
• Don't delete your chats, photos or call records with the other person's spouse; leave them as they are.
• Don't contact the plaintiff or the other person's spouse. Even if you want to explain, wait.

Many people panic and delete chat rooms. Those chats also contain material in the defendant's favor, such as records of the other person saying they were single. Messages apologizing or explaining directly to the plaintiff can be submitted as the plaintiff's evidence, and contact to get your story straight with the other person's spouse later makes your entire account hard to believe.

Ignoring the complaint is not an option either. If you don't file an answer within the deadline, the court can treat the plaintiff's claims as admitted and rule without a hearing (Civil Procedure Act (민사소송법) Articles 256 and 257).

Also be careful about venting to people around you about the case. What you say may reach the plaintiff's side and come back as a written witness statement.

A complaint is only the plaintiff's account; nothing in it has been established as fact. As you read, mark what is true, what is untrue and what is exaggerated, and you will save time in the consultation.

It is common for the plaintiff to state a longer period than the real one or to inflate the number of meetings. We rebut those points one by one with objective material, such as evidence that you were elsewhere on that date or records of periods when contact had stopped. If a screenshot attached to the complaint cuts out only part of a conversation, submitting the surrounding messages is another option.

• The amount claimed (relief sought)
• The period and places of the relationship the plaintiff alleges
• The grounds for saying you knew of the marriage
• The list of attached evidence (갑 제○호증, Plaintiff's Exhibits)
• Whether any other procedure, such as a provisional attachment, is running alongside

There are three broad directions for an answer: seeking dismissal by contesting the infidelity or your knowledge of the marriage; arguing that the marriage had already broken down when the relationship began; or admitting liability but contesting the amount. If you claim you didn't know and evidence then shows you did, even your argument for a reduced amount loses force, so we check the evidence first and then decide the direction. If time is short, file an answer stating that you contest the claim within the deadline, and supplement it later with a brief (준비서면).

Once you file the answer, the parties exchange arguments in briefs, and if the court refers the case to mediation (조정), the amount and terms are negotiated at the mediation session. If mediation succeeds, no written judgment is left on record, and terms such as confidentiality and no further claims can also be set. If not, the case goes through hearings to a judgment; if you disagree, you can appeal within 2 weeks of receiving the written judgment.

Sometimes a provisional attachment (가압류) order arrives before the complaint. It means the plaintiff has frozen your deposits or salary before judgment; the money does not go to the plaintiff right away. If you think the attachment is excessive, you can contest it by filing an objection (Civil Execution Act (민사집행법) Article 283).

Sometimes the plaintiff gets in touch saying they will tell your company or family. Keep such messages rather than deleting them, and don't respond in kind. The response to the pressure and the compensation issue are handled separately.

Jisan Law lines up the complaint, the attached evidence and your chats with the other person's spouse in date order, and separates what to contest from what to admit. If the plaintiff is pressuring you by threatening to tell your workplace or family, we look at how to respond to that as well. A managing partner handles the consultation personally. We don't hide behind office managers or associate lawyers; we go through the material you bring from the start, together with you. We explain the fees after the consultation, once we have heard the details of the case and the scope of work.

If only a few days remain before the deadline, you can start by sending us a photo of the complaint through the chat on this page.