TUI denies parents’ request to intervene in son’s divorce

The Court of Final Appeal (TUI) has denied the parents’ request to intervene in their local son’s divorce, specifically regarding the division of assets between the couple.

According to TUI, the local man’s parents gave their son a substantial sum as a gift, enabling him to acquire the residential unit where the couple lived. After the divorce, they wanted to see this sum returned.

Additionally, the son had requested that the court consider a sum of MOP200,000 in a bank account as funds related to his father’s work rather than his personal assets.

The parents wanted the sum of HKD2,547,000, initially said to have been donated by the man’s mother, to be treated as her money and taken into account as third-party money in the couple’s asset separation.

After the Courts of First and Second Instance dismissed these requests, the case was brought before the TUI, which reviewed it.

The collegiate court noted that the intervention of third parties constitutes a procedural incident governed by Articles 262 et seq. of the Code of Civil Procedure, which is essentially divided into principal intervention, accessory intervention, and opposition.

The same Civil Code notes that where a case is pending between two or more persons, any person with a legal interest in the case being decided favorably to one of the principal parties may intervene as an assistant to aid that party.

Still, the law also notes that the intervener’s interest cannot be based on mere intellectual curiosity or humanitarian considerations; rather, it must be a personal interest arising from the existence of a legal relationship connected to the one that is the subject matter of the proceedings, the practical outcome of which may be affected by the decision to be rendered.

In this case, the TUI understood that the parents intervened to seek to prevent their son from having to transfer to his ex-wife, in a partition, a portion or half of the assets donated or acquired with the donations they had made in the past. However, such a consideration does not constitute or form part of the subject matter of any legal relationship already established and recognized, arising from a legally relevant, valid, and unexpired factual situation.

In this way, the court noted that the parents, when they made the donation, had never established a requirement for this procedure or invoked a right under a reversion clause. Given such facts, TUI ruled that the mere intention to prevent the transfer of the assets does not constitute a valid legal ground for granting the claim.