Summary Woman was granted divorce from husband after court accepted evidence of 'read' but unreplied texts
(Web Desk)- A divorce case in Taiwan shows that while social media can help bring people together it can just as easily tear them apart.
According to BBC, a court in Taiwan granted a woman divorce after accepting as evidence the ‘read’ indicators on Line messages that she had sent to her husband. The woman had been seeking to use the messages as proof that her husband had opened the text messages but never replied and hence, was deliberately ignoring her. She, therefore, contested that she was entitled to a divorce.
A judge said that the woman, surnamed Lin, had sent her husband several messages over a period of about six months, including one after she was admitted to the hospital because of a car accident. Yet, the husband had not bothered to answer any of them. The judge also said that when the man had finally sent his wife a brief text after her accident it mainly dealt with matters about the couple’s dog and informed Lin that she had mail.
Even without issue of the ignored messages married life between the couple was troubled at best. Court documents reveal that the husband’s family was "unfriendly" towards Lin despite the fact that she paid the majority of the family s bills out of her own pocket.
Seeing this state of affairs the Hsinchu district s family affairs court ruled that Lin’s marriage was beyond repair and therefore, she was therefore entitled to a divorce because as the judge noted their appeared to be "very little interaction with the plaintiff; the defendant rarely replies to the plaintiff s messages."
While the divorce is still not completely final as the husband can file an appeal to the ruling if he wants to that is unlikely to happen as according to the judge the man never showed up for his own hearing and has yet to respond to any of the court‘s other notices.
"Blue-ticking" a term that refers to the act of reading but not replying to someone s messages is a concept that comes from social media apps such as WhatsApp and Line. The feature is mainly meant to give additional information to users about their messages.
However, as this incident shows unread messages can be used in court cases as proof or evidence.
