de facto couples

I'm interested in learning about de facto couples in China.

search "common law marriage" on google or wikipedia. you will get plenty of answers.

In short, in the modern world, "de facto", "common law", marriages are not recognized, (or very difficult to prove) in any county.

China does not recognize de facto relationships.

If you need the legal protections of a marriage, get married.

De facto couples are recognised in many countries! I just didn't know it existed in China too. There was a front page story of an unmarried Chinese couple living in Hong Kong, the man passed away and the woman is now left with nothing. A lawyer was quoted saying if they had been living in China, the woman would've been protected. The lawyer also said that if the boyfriend leaves the girlfriend to marry another woman after a certain period of cohabitation (not sure how long, interested to know), the original girlfriend can even sue the bf for marrying while already married.

I certainly agree with murm. Many countries have legislated for defacto couples to have the same legal rights as married couples (provided certain conditions of time have been met, as with marriage). Not difficult at all to prove in these countries - just a matter of evidence. I have not heard about China specifically though.

Do not get your legal advise from stuff you read in the news. Journalist only report special, sensational, or otherwise unusual cases.

Read the article on common law marriage on Wikipedia. It is very informative.

De facto relationship are technically recognized in some countries, but they are extremely hard to prove in most jurisdictions. (assuming one party of the relationship denies a "marriage" exists.) The case mentioned by murm certainly is special, one party is dead, so there is no-one arguing against the relationship.

In a childless co-habitation, proving "marriage" against the will of one party is very hard. For example, the legal test in UK is that two people must "hold out the the world as a married couple", by implication, the denying party needs only to provide one witness who knows the couple is not married, and the court will not recognized the "marriage".

Most times when someone checks "de facto", he/she is looking for a "divorce" settlement. The bad news is in most countries, unless there are children involved, the weaker party will get very little legal protection.