If you are determined to end your marriage through litigation, the first step you have to take is to get your divorce case accepted by a competent court, which is not an easy job, you have to persuade the judge at the case establishment window that the court has th­­e jurisdiction and convinces him/her that all the documents necessary are available.

Your attorney will help you with the persuasion about the jurisdiction issue, but it is up to you to get all documents necessary ready. The following are the basic documents for a divorce lawsuit.

For a Chinese citizen, the copy of ID is enough and a foreigner, a copy of passport will do.

The original marriage certificate has to be submitted to the court if when the lawsuit is filed. If you married abroad, the marriage certificate has to be notarized by some competent authority and authenticated by Chinese embassy in the country where you get married. Basically, all the Chinese embassies abroad have such business and you will find the procedures on their websites. In addition, such notarized and authenticated marriage certificate needs to be translated by a translation entity in China whose translation will be acknowledged by the court. In Shanghai, there are two translation institutes who will do the job, Shanghai Translator Association and Shanghai SISU Translation Service Co.

So take the original certificate, the notary and authentication document and the translation version.

If you and your spouse have a child during marriage, prepare a copy of the child’s passport or the birth certificate or the social security card if no ID card is available.

This is not a must-preparing document but you need to get such a list prepared. Even if you may not get a divorce judgment for the first filing, still the judge will have a brief check with husband and wife properties.

More often than not, when we help our clients with a divorce lawsuit filing for the first time, we do not give a detailed list of husband and wife property but only a claim like to get husband and wife properties divided in compliance with laws. For one reason, it may not be possible for one party to get all the documents of the properties available and the other party may disclose the clues of such properties for whose existences we may have to submit evidences to prove when asked by the judge. For the other reason, the judge at the case establishment window may not check whether you have the list and you may have no idea what the other party may want from the divorce. So leave the properties for the moment but you still need to get such a list prepared especially when the other party agrees to the divorce but only disagrees to the division of the jointly owned properties.

With or without such evidences, you can still get your case accepted.

However, as said before, the judge will grant a divorce in China only when the feeling between the couple is broken in a real sense.

Yes, it is a problem how can you prove the broken feeling since it is so intangible and seems beyond proof. But try to collect something that may indirectly show the judge that you two now have no feeling for each other like quarrel records, family violence records like that.

A complaint is an indispensible part of a divorce lawsuit, on which your claims need to be stated. So are the reasons and facts to support your claim.

Make the complaint brief, clear and do not have any words that may irritate the other party. You come to court for a solution to your broken marriage not to seek for revenge or to fight a words of war.

In addition, get your spouse’ s contact information on the complaint and make sure the court can reach him/her. Otherwise, the documents serving will become a big problem and the case may get endless delay because of the inability to serve the legal documents to the other party.

An evidence list covers the names of the evidences and the purpose of each evidence. For example, a marriage certificate, the purpose of the certificate to prove when you get married with your spouse. Do not make the list too complicated and usually for a divorce case, the evidences can be classified into three categories: marriage and broken feeling evidences, husband and wife marital assets evidences, evidences for child custody. The missing of some of the evidences will not lessen your chance to get the case established at court but may will have deep effect on your interest during the trial.

When a foreigner appoints a domestic lawyer in China for a divorce lawsuit, he/she can prepare the POA in three ways, either to sign the POA in front of the judge when the case is filed together with your attorney. Or if you are available in China, find a notary office to get the POA notarized. Or if you are abroad and you are not sure when the lawsuit will be filed, prepare a POA abroad and get the POA notarized by a competent institute and authenticated by a Chinese Embassy at your place.

Unlike other civil disputes, your lawyer can only act on your behalf in the matters that never have substantial effect on your rights or obligations, like receiving summons for you, submitting evidences for you but not powers to reach a settlement or to give up a claim and etc. The power you delegate to your lawyer is general and more often about the procedures.

When a foreign related divorce dispute is filed, the judge in charge of the case establishment will first check if the court has jurisdiction over the case.

Primary evidences to prove the court’s jurisdiction are the lease agreement to show that you and your couple have been living in such a place for more than one year by the time the lawsuit is initiated; your spouse’s residential book (Hukou) and etc.

The above, except item 4 and item 5 which may be submitted to the court when time is appropriate, all the left items are essential to get the case established in China.

The above are only the initial documents you need to collect for case establishment in China. You still have a lot of homework to do before you can win what you claim during the trial.

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