Open Decision Ledger · Family & inheritance law
Exceptional allowance of a liable spouse's divorce claim
Supreme Court, June 16, 2022, 2022Meu10109 (judgment)
No holding summary · checked against points at issue. The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Case name: 이혼및재산분할
Official text on the National Law Information Center
Question
When may a divorce claim by the spouse who chiefly caused the breakdown of the marriage be allowed exceptionally, and what circumstances must be weighed in deciding that?
Holding
A liable spouse's divorce claim may be allowed exceptionally where, even after a considerable lapse of time, the responsibility for the breakdown no longer remains to a degree that requires the claim to be rejected, so that allowing it does not hollow out the institution of marriage or offend public morals. Whether that is so is decided by weighing together all the circumstances of the marriage, including the nature and degree of the fault, the other spouse's genuine will to restore or keep the marriage, the passage of time, the other spouse's condition and livelihood if the divorce is allowed, and the children's situation. Where one spouse's affair was the occasion of the breakdown but neither made any serious effort to restore the marriage and long years of mutual hostility ended in an irreparable breakdown, responsibility may be shared, and the fault alone does not leave that spouse with a degree of primary responsibility that bars the claim.
Points at issue, verbatim
예외적으로 유책배우자의 이혼청구를 허용할 수 있는 경우 및 그 판단 기준 / 이때 고려하여야 할 사항
Unofficial English translation
Cases in which a divorce claim by the spouse at fault may exceptionally be allowed and the criteria for such determination / Matters to be considered in making such determination
Disposition
Reversed and remanded Stated in the decision
원심판결을 파기하고, 사건을 서울고등법원에 환송한다.
Unofficial English translation
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Seoul High Court.
Form of the test
Circumstances weighed Stated in the decision
혼인관계의 여러 사정을 두루 고려하여야 한다(대법원 2015. 9. 15. 선고 2013므568 전원합의체 판결 등 참조).
Unofficial English translation
all the circumstances of the marriage must be comprehensively considered (see, e.g., Supreme Court en banc judgment 2013Meu568 decided September 15, 2015).
Factors
- 예외적으로 유책배우자의 이혼청구를 허용할 수 있는 경우 및 그 판단 기준
- 이때 고려하여야 할 사항
Unofficial English translation
• Cases in which a divorce claim by the spouse at fault may exceptionally be allowed and the criteria for such determination
• Matters to be considered in making such determination
Relation to precedent
Follows earlier decisions Stated in the decision
대법원 2015. 9. 15. 선고 2013므568 전원합의체 판결(공2015하, 1601)
Unofficial English translation
Supreme Court en banc judgment 2013Meu568 decided September 15, 2015 (Gong 2015 Ha, 1601)
Decisions referred to
대법원 2010. 7. 29. 선고 2008므1475 판결, 대법원 2015. 9. 15. 선고 2013므568 전원합의체 판결(공2015하, 1601)
Burden of proof
Not addressed Not in the decision
Open question and revisit condition
Where an affair and years of disputes over company management are inseparably mixed, how much of the responsibility must the liable spouse still carry before their divorce claim must be rejected?
The remand judgment of the Seoul High Court, once it apportions responsibility across the whole period of the marriage, will show how this standard is applied. A later en banc decision on Article 840(vi) of the Civil Act, or an amendment to Article 826(1) or Article 840(vi) of the Civil Act, would require this entry to be read again.
Cross-family AI independent reading & axis check
6 of 8 axes matched GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI, codex CLI) · 2026-10-25
A reader from another model family (GPT-6 Astra), given the official text but not the primary reading, agreed on 6 of the 8 axes; the readings differed on axis 5 (factors), axis 8 (open question and revisit condition).
Axis 5 (Factors): Primary “예외적으로 유책배우자의 이혼청구를 허용할 수 있는 경우 및 그 판단 기준 / 이때 고려하여야 할 사항” vs Independent “유책배우자의 이혼청구 / 예외적으로 유책배우자의 이혼청구를 허용할 수 있는 경우”
Both factor lists only restate the question's wording, and neither lists the concrete considerations such as degree of fault, the other spouse's will to restore, lapse of time, and the children, which appear only in the primary's answer.
유책배우자의 이혼청구Axis 8 (Open question and revisit condition): Primary “Where an affair and years of disputes over company management are inseparably mixed, how much of the responsibility must the liable spouse still carry before their divorce claim must be rejected?” vs Independent “Will further examination of the entire marriage establish that the husband's divorce claim should be allowed?”
The primary asks how much responsibility the liable spouse must still bear where an affair is mixed with company disputes, while the independent asks whether further examination of the whole marriage would support allowing the husband's claim.
예외적으로 유책배우자의 이혼청구를 허용할 수 있는 경우 및 그 판단 기준 / 이때 고려하여야 할 사항Raw responses and comparison record: Protocol · Blind readings (JSONL) · Axis comparison (JSONL) · SHA-256 (JSON)
Lower-court contrast & scope of application
Lower-court reading vs. Supreme Court holding
Lower-court context: The Seoul High Court, in its judgment of 16 December 2021 (2021Reu22138), dismissed the plaintiff's claim for divorce as a claim by the liable spouse. It looked only to the plaintiff's extramarital relationship and the child outside the marriage, discovered around 2011, as the fundamental cause of the breakdown, and did not weigh the course of the separation and the disputes that followed.
Supreme Court standard: The Supreme Court held that focusing on the affair alone, without considering the absence of any serious effort by either spouse to restore the marriage and the long continued separation and conflict, meant the court below had misread the construction of Article 840(vi) of the Civil Act and had failed to conduct the examination that was needed, affecting its judgment. It directed that the whole period of the marriage be examined concretely to ask whether the breakdown was caused by the affair alone, or by disputes over management and other matters for which both share responsibility, or by those causes mixed together, and whether there was any ground for a divorce under Article 840(vi), in principle or exceptionally. The whole judgment was reversed and the case remanded to the Seoul High Court.
Distinguishing conditions
- A case in which, even though a considerable period has elapsed, the liable spouse's responsibility still remains to the degree that the claim has to be rejected.
- A case in which the other spouse genuinely means to keep the marriage and makes real efforts to improve the relationship.
- A case in which allowing the divorce would worsen the other spouse's mental, social or economic condition and livelihood, or have a serious effect on the children's welfare.
Record verification notes
Set the whole course of the marriage against the file, from the start of cohabitation in 1981 onward, and separate the affair discovered in 2011 from the management and property disputes that ran from around April 2016, since the Court asked which of them was the real cause or whether they were mixed together. Test the other spouse's stated will to continue the marriage against what that spouse actually did, because the Court asked whether it was a genuine will grounded in the duties of spouses. Also gather what shows the protection and care given to the other spouse and the adult children, and check which reading of Article 840(vi) of the Civil Act governs.
From the official text
Points at issue
예외적으로 유책배우자의 이혼청구를 허용할 수 있는 경우 및 그 판단 기준 / 이때 고려하여야 할 사항
Unofficial English translation
Cases in which a divorce claim by the spouse at fault may exceptionally be allowed and the criteria for such determination / Matters to be considered in making such determination
Summary of the holding
The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Order
원심판결을 파기하고, 사건을 서울고등법원에 환송한다.
Unofficial English translation
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Seoul High Court.
Provisions referred to
민법 제826조 제1항, 제840조 제6호
Read 2026-10-25 · Cross-read 2026-10-25. All quotes matched against the official text. The Chinese-character placeholders the court used for anonymised parties are given in their Korean readings, and parenthetical Chinese-character glosses are omitted.
Every entry is published only after all quotes have been matched character by character against the official text, and audited by an independent second reading from a different model family across all eight axes. Both agreed axes and text-grounded interpretive divergences are recorded openly. The ledger is a research record, not an assessment of the court or advice on any matter.
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