Can children file for divorce on behalf of their deceased father, who remarried a woman from Vietnam?
On Tuesday, a legal counseling segment on YTN Radio featured a case in which a child sought to file for divorce on behalf of their late father, who had remarried a Vietnamese woman he lost contact with a decade ago.
Twenty years after his wife’s death, the father opened a restaurant. The business became successful and generated substantial profits. Ten years later, he remarried a Vietnamese woman through an international marriage agency.
Complications arose shortly after their marriage. The Vietnamese woman disappeared the day after their marriage registration. Despite traveling to Vietnam to find her, the father could not locate her. Devastated by the situation, he lived alone until being diagnosed with cancer last year.
Before his death, he expressed his desire to divorce the woman to his children. They eventually discovered that the woman had returned to Vietnam, but by then, their father’s health had severely declined, and he passed away.
The child disclosed that their father’s estate is valued at approximately 1.7 billion won (about $1.17 million). The seven siblings all support their father’s wish for a divorce. They inquired whether they could file for divorce on his behalf and explored ways to prevent the Vietnamese woman, who is legally still their father’s wife, from inheriting any of his assets.
Attorney Hong Soo Hyun from Shinsegae Law Firm clarified that only the spouses involved in a divorce case have legal standing. Once one spouse has passed away, a divorce lawsuit is no longer possible. However, she noted that considering the circumstances—where the father never truly lived with his wife as a married couple—an annulment lawsuit could be a viable option.
Hong explained that the children, as heirs, could file for an annulment against the surviving spouse. The lawsuit could proceed through public notification even if the Vietnamese woman’s whereabouts remain unknown. She also pointed out that courts in South Korea often invalidate marriages when they believe the union was entered into solely for immigration or employment purposes, such as a foreign national marrying to gain entry into the country.
However, Hong warned that if the father had made several trips to Vietnam to confirm his intention to marry and had registered the marriage following Vietnamese law, it may be challenging to annul the marriage based solely on the woman’s brief stay in Korea and subsequent departure.
Nevertheless, Hong suggested that if the children could prove that the woman aggressively pushed for the marriage registration immediately upon entering Korea, that the marriage was merely a formality in Vietnam with no actual cohabitation, and that she cut off contact with their father shortly after living together for just 1-2 days, they could argue that she never had genuine marital intent. This could potentially lead to a successful annulment.
Regarding the inheritance of their father’s estate, Hong advised that in addition to the annulment lawsuit, the siblings could also pursue a determination of contribution and a division of inheritance. She explained that if they could demonstrate their active involvement in the family restaurant business—which helped grow their father’s wealth—and their care for him during his illness, they may be entitled to inherit more than the standard legal portion.
