Woman Gets $154M in Divorce Case After She Refused to Abort Baby
Florence Tsang, the ex-wife of Hong Kong billionaire Samathur Li, will receive HK$1.2 billion ($154 million U.S. dollars) in a divorce settlement, it emerged Friday. During the Thursday hearing, it was also revealed that Li had tried convincing his wife of eight years to have an abortion when he found out three years ago that she was pregnant.
Tsang never had the abortion.
Li has reportedly seen his daughter only two times since, which was one of the arguments in the case that is believed to be the biggest settlement in Hong Kong history.
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Tsang, a 38-year-old solicitor, and Li, a property tycoon, married in 2000 and separated in 2008.
Tsang was reportedly hoping to receive 55 percent of the couple's common assets, which is not unusual in divorce cases in the region, according to The Standard Hong Kong. Instead, the settlement represented 20 percent.
According to the judge's ruling, the ex-wife's "needs" include a HK$250 million Hong Kong property and a HK$30.53 million London property, as well as HK$2.5 million to buy two cars, HK$5 million to buy a yacht and approximately HK$4.6 million to join clubs in Hong Kong and England. Tsang was given over HK$215 million as a "Duxbury award" -- a fixed sum for life, The Standard reported. The father had the right to recover gifts, including over HK$388 million he gave his son, the judge said according to The Standard.
Li was "worth" some HK$6.42 billion as of March this year, the newspaper reported, while his wife was "worth"over HK$79 million.
A separate fund of over HK$26 million will reportedly be set up for the couple's daughter, who the woman refused to abort.
After Tsang got pregnant and refused to have an abortion three years ago, Li reportedly started an affair with another woman immediately, which caused the end of their marriage. (Li’s father, who is also a property mogul in Hong Kong, was also enmeshed in a multi-billion dollar settlement in July, according to CNN.)
In 2004, reports claimed that Hong Kong had the highest abortion rates in the developed world. Almost a third of all pregnancies were reportedly terminated at the time. The number could have been even higher when taking under consideration the common phenomenon of illegal abortions, experts were saying.
According to NationMaster.com, Russia is the place where most abortions take place currently, followed by the United States, India and Japan. Howver, Mainland China has a grim reputation for a track record of gender-selective abortions, a phenomenon in which parents chose to abort female fetuses more often than the male ones.
The Chinese government said recently it is aiming to crack down on instances of sex-selective abortion for non-medical purposes, in order to protect the nation's female citizens. The male to female ratio in China was 117 to 110 in 2004, when the idea of regulating sex-selective abortion was first proposed.
