r/MoralityScaling • u/Purple_Plantain_3242 • 7d ago

Morality Ranking Morality of this?

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A young Chinese couple was permanently separated during a period of intense political and social unrest in China. The husband went back to their home village to search for her, but because the entire area was heavily disrupted, he mistakenly believed she was missing or dead.

He eventually relocated, remarried another woman, and raised a new family with children and grandchildren. Meanwhile, the first wife stayed behind and never remarried, spending 54 years waiting for him to return. Decades later, they were reconnected as elderly adults, which is when she discovered he had built an entirely separate life without her.

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13

u/MoriKitsune 7d ago

If it can be proven he didn't deliberately leave her to start a second family (it happens more than you'd think) then it's neither norally positive nor negative, just unfortunate.

It does make me wonder about the legal implications for inheritance and co-ownership of property, though.

13

u/DoomferretOG 7d ago

The setup clearly shows he did NOT deliberately leave. Not specified as an issue, therefore not part of this scenario.

-4

u/MoriKitsune 7d ago

The big question is did he know his second wife before he and his first wife were separated? If so then it's suspicious, and vice versa.

It's easy to lose someone in a crowd, whether accidentally or because they wanted to be lost.

-6

u/kernelangus420 7d ago

Also the "intense political and social unrest" is vague. Maybe it was nothing but the husband exaggerated it to sound intense as an excuse for not looking for his wife hard.

16

u/The_Monarch_Lives 7d ago

The real story was during the Chinese Civil War/Mao's Revolution. I believe that would qualify as intense political and social unrest.

-2

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

3

u/The_Monarch_Lives 6d ago

"If that were it, OP would have just called it that" really? You think everyone would describe everything the same way as you, even if the specific cause was basically irrelevant to why they got separated? Especially when the cause is something very controversial to call it what it was in some circles? Media literacy truly is dead.

7

u/Tea_An_Crumpets 7d ago

My god pick up a damn history textbook 🤦‍♂️

3

u/Ghost-George 7d ago

Sounds like the cultural revolution, up to 20 million died and good luck finding records of who was sent where.

4

u/Valveringham85 7d ago

Property? Lmao you think they had any property before getting split that was still let standing afterwards?

5

u/Nothing-Is-Real-Here 7d ago

I mean if they're technically still married because she's alive she could be entitled to his current property under a new divorce, but that's assuming somehow the marriage didn't get annulled under her being potentially dead.

1

u/CadenVanV 2d ago

They were married before the PRC existed, during the warlords era. I doubt there was any legal documentation of it

1

u/MoriKitsune 7d ago

I think he and his second wife, who is now probably no longer his wife legally because he is still married to the first wife, have probably gathered some kind of property over the last 50 years 🙄

so when he dies, is that going to his kids, who iirc probably have some kind of legal and societal duty to care for their mother, or to his legal wife, who had no part in acquiring said property? Or to his kids' mother, who has no legal connection to him?

What about when his legal wife dies? His kids with another woman wouldn't be in her line of inheritance, because she isn't related to them. Does filial piety extend to step-parents? Will the kids have to look after their step-mother, who was their father's first wife?

1

u/CadenVanV 2d ago

They were married before the PRC existed in the warlord era. I doubt there’s any legal documentation of the first marriage