Whats right and wrong with divorce in Japan Mutantfrog Travelogue. Note I started drafting this post about a week ago. Many of these points have since been raised in our educated readers comments to Curzons earlier post on the Savoie case. Im going to re raise them anyway, since I believe the broader discussion of international divorce should continue. My first trip to court was as a student in an undergraduate law class. I was assigned to sit in a session of the local courthouse and take notes on what happened. This was also where I saw a divorce for the first time. A middle aged, heavyset black couple with soft Southern drawls came in. The entirety of the divorce went like this JUDGE I understand you two want to get divorced. WIFE Thats right, Your Honor. JUDGE What is the reason for this WIFE He cheated on me, and lied to me. And we dont wanna be married no more. JUDGE Is this true, sir HUSBAND Yes, it is. JUDGE Do you have any children WIFE No, sir. JUDGE PropertyWhen the Eagles pulled Carson Wentz in last nights preseason game, Philly fans did what they do best Booed. It wasnt anything in particular against the team. HUSBAND Its taken care of. JUDGE Fine. I declare you lawfully divorced. Take this form to the clerk. WIFE Thank you. I left the courthouse shortly after that, and saw them getting into the same car together to drive home. Logic Problems grouped by difficulty. Includes answers and hints. Simple but fun frog jumping puzzle SMART KIT School Games Puzzles. Parents and teachers love our clever puzzles and games since they stimulate thinking, logic. It was a surprisingly cute divorce. Since becoming a lawyer and moving to Tokyo, I have gotten an inside seat in some much nastier divorces. Although the law firm I used to work at was primarily dealing with corporate clients, we would regularly get a personal inquiry from, say, a clients secretary, telling us her brothers children were stolen by his crazy Japanese wife, and we would invariably try to respond with something productive even though there was nothing particularly productive to do at that point. The problems in resolving cross border family disputes involving Japan are legion, and have inspired a voluminous website written by an anonymous estranged gaijin dad. First, some facts. The statistics in this section all come from the Japanese government. You can see the original stats in Japanese CSV format here. 2,500 free kids games at shixe. com now. Cool games that girls boys simply love to play onlineOne important but rarely cited fact about Japanese divorce law is that most divorces are consensual and involve little legal process at all. These so called kyogi rikon have consistently accounted for 9. A lot of this has to do with the ease of the consensual divorce. The two parties simply sign and seal a one page form heres a sample in Japanese and file it with city hall. Its possible to get a consensual divorce without ever setting foot in court. But there has to be consensus on what to do with property and children. In this respect, the system makes it comparatively very easy to end a marriage so long as there are no particular disputes to resolve. If the parties cant agree to the terms of their divorce, they must go to family court. The first phase is chotei rikon, essentially a mediated divorce under the auspices of the family court system. It is supervised by a judge but the mediation is conducted by laypeople. If mediation fails, the family court judge can step in with a shimpan rikon, a sort of preliminary judgment, but this can be defeated by either partys objection within two weeks, and so it does not form a statistically significant number of divorces. The last resort is a hanketsu rikon, which is also finalized by the family court judge, but can only be concluded upon a showing of particular legal facts such as infidelity, cruelty or unwarranted denial of sexual intercourse. The parties can reach a settlement during the final court process, in which case their agreement is called a wakai rikon this system was introduced in the past decade and has become a not uncommon way to resolve marital disputes. Its a common misconception that mothers always get custody after a Japanese divorce. In reality, fathers end up with custody in a significant percentage of cases. In fact, until the 6. Check out this graph. The thing is that as stated above most divorces are reached by voluntary agreement of some kind. Once the case gets into family court, the more or less official presumption is that the mother is a more suitable custodian unless the father can prove otherwise. The pre eminent English academic commentator on Japanese child abduction, Doshisha law professor and periodic Japan Times contributor Colin P. A. Jones who incidentally lost his own kid in a Japanese divorce proceedingtranslated the family courts mediation manual as follows When a child is small, it is thought that the mother should generally be designated custodian. For a young child, the mothers existence is irreplaceable, and in mediation, custody designations should usually proceed from this basis. When a father is demanding to be designated custodian, it is not uncommon for him to base his arguments on the fact that because he has to work outside the home, his own parents can look after the child. However, it can be said that it is better for the child to live with his mother than with his grandparents. Unless the conditions in which a mother lives are judged unsuitable for the child, as a general rule I cannot approve of awarding sole custody to fathers. Even if grandparents do look after the child, it is likely that matters will arise daily in which they will not pay the same level of attention as a parent. This manual does not have the force of law it is merely an official reference for the judges. The practical effect of it is that fathers can only win custody by an overwhelming display of evidence that the mother is unfit to be a parent. Aside Our favorite Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, kept his first two children in a consensual divorce in 1. His wife was six months pregnant at the time the papers were finalized and gave birth after the divorce. Koizumi tried to claim this third child as well, but the matter ended up in family court mediation and Koizumis ex wife retained custody. Japanese Wikipedia interestingly doesnt even name the third child of Koizumi, apparently because he is no longer legally Koizumis. What about joint custody There is generally no such thing as joint custody among Japanese nationals. Visitation rights mensetsu kosho ken may be granted by the court, but are often very limited sometimes to a few hours once per year, are very difficult to legally enforce, and one parent must still be designated as the custodian whether or not the divorce is consensual. The only way a Japanese child can be registered as being in joint custody is if the child has another citizenship and their parents divorce was finalized in another country which allows joint custody. This is not a legal provision per se it was allowed by a Ministry of Justice circular and could theoretically be changed overnight if the Justice Minister changed their mind about the issue. Even outside Japan, joint custody is a sticky subject among parents, academics and jurists. Terrie Lloyd made the following statement in his email newsletter earlier this week The view of most Japanese judges based on interviews with judges that we have done in the past is that kids need to be insulated from the hurt between divorcing parents by giving them just one care giver. But this is a traditional view and has no basis in fact. Child psychologists outside Japan generally agree that kids need the love and attention of both parents, even if they are divorced.