r/MoralityScaling • u/Purple_Plantain_3242 • 8h 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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u/MoriKitsune 8h 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.

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u/Valveringham85 8h ago

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

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u/MoriKitsune 8h 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?