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Boston, Massachusetts divorce lawyers represented husband and wife in a marriage dissolution case involving property division and alimony.

The parties were married in China in 1992. They have one child who was born in 1996.[2] While the parties lived together in China when they first got married, they lived apart from one another throughout the majority of their twenty-three year marriage. Between 2003 and 2006, the wife lived primarily in Zhuhai, China, while the husband lived 100 miles away in Shenzhen with their child. In 2009, the husband and the child moved to the United States, living first in Missouri, and later settling in Massachusetts. The wife moved to the United States in 2013, and lived with the husband and child in Massachusetts, during which time she slept on a mattress in the child's room.

In January 2016, the wife purchased a home in Lexington using funds from her brother (Lexington property).[3] The parties and the child lived together in the Lexington property from approximately April 2016 to January 2017, during which time the parties slept in separate bedrooms. The husband was abusive and controlling toward the wife throughout the marriage, and, in January 2017, the wife obtained a G. L. c. 209A abuse prevention order against him.

In April 2017, the husband filed a complaint for divorce in the Probate and Family Court. In his complaint, he requested conveyance of the Lexington property.[4] Pursuant to a May 2018 temporary order, the wife was ordered to pay the husband temporary alimony of $300 per week. Subsequently, a discovery master was appointed in July 2018. In a March 27, 2019 order, the discovery master denied the wife's objections to the husband's revised request for interrogatories and production of documents. The husband later filed a motion to compel the wife to produce the requested documents, which the discovery master allowed in October 2019.

Sometime in 2019, the husband traveled to China, entered an apartment that the wife claimed belonged to her brother, and obtained documents without permission. The husband asserted that the documents, which he stored in a laundry basket (laundry basket documents), contained evidence of the wife's alleged undisclosed assets in China. On August 29, 2019, after a hearing, the judge issued an order directing the husband to "produce [an] itemized list [and] copies of all items taken out of [the wife's] brother's home in China forthwith." On September 6, 2019, the wife filed a complaint for contempt alleging that the husband failed to comply with the August 29 order. Following a hearing on October 3, 2019, the judge found the husband in contempt and a contempt judgment entered on October 3, 2019.

The judge ordered that the laundry basket documents be provided to the discovery master to determine whether they should be allowed in evidence. On November 25, 2019, the discovery master issued an order denying the husband's request to place the laundry basket documents on the trial exhibit list
because: (1) they were written in Chinese and were not accompanied by any English translations, which was prejudicial to the wife; and (2) the husband had failed to produce copies of these documents pursuant to the August 29 order. The husband filed a motion contesting the discovery master's November 25 order, which the judge denied in December 2019.

In November 2020, after the trial had commenced, the husband sought to introduce documents, obtained and translated by his counsel in China,[5] that purported to show that the wife transferred various Chinese assets to her brother after the husband filed his complaint for divorce in 2017. The husband also filed a motion for sanctions, alleging that the wife failed to comply with the discovery master's orders by not producing these documents. The judge denied the motion for sanctions. The wife filed a motion in limine to preclude the husband from introducing documents obtained by the husband's counsel in China. The judge allowed the wife's motion, noting the husband's failure to meet the long-expired discovery deadline, the late timing of the husband's request after trial was underway, and the prejudicial effect on the wife.

The wife also moved to strike certain witness testimony of Sumiao Chen, who owned a Cambridge restaurant in which the wife had invested. At trial, Chen testified to the wife's statements regarding a potential capital investment in the restaurant, her ability to make a total initial investment of $300,000. The judge sustained the wife's objection, noting the husband's opposition, on hearsay grounds and struck Chen's testimony describing the content of her conversations with the wife.

On April 5, 2022, the judge issued the divorce judgment along with findings of fact, rationale, and conclusions of law. The divorce judgment provided, in relevant part, that the wife would retain all assets held in her individual name[6] (having a combined value of over $1 million),[7] while the husband would
retain all assets held in his individual name[8] (having a known combined valued of under $3,000). Ultimately, the judge found that the assets standing in each party's individual name "were never commingled into the fabric of the marriage," and the parties "did not acquire any joint marital assets throughout the marriage."[9] The judgment also terminated the wife's temporary alimony obligation and awarded no general term alimony to the husband. This appeal ensued.

Chiu v. Lianxiang Fu, 22-P-1102 (Mass. App. Aug 15, 2024)

Outcome: "So much of the divorce judgment as pertains to property division and alimony is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this memorandum and order. The divorce judgment is affirmed in all other respects."

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