This image is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]
This image is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]

A woman who wants to divorce her husband after he secretly borrowed money to invest in cryptocurrency and leveraged stock products — and lost a fortune — fears being saddled with debts she never knew existed.

The case was featured Tuesday on YTN Radio's "Attorney Jo In-seop's Consultation," submitted by a woman identified only as A, who said she and her husband are a dual-income couple in their third year of marriage.

According to A, the couple started their married life in a jeonse apartment, pooling their individual savings and taking out a jeonse loan. "I'm proud of how hard I saved — even cutting back on a single cup of coffee," she said.

The trouble came to a head recently. When A came home from work, her husband suddenly dropped to his knees and confessed that he had been making debt-fueled investments and was being hounded by creditors. He said he had started investing in cryptocurrency and stocks a year earlier at a colleague's urging, and that after early gains he had taken out personal loans and borrowed from relatives and friends to pour more money in. He had gone all-in on so-called "house coins" and leveraged stock products, only to see the cryptocurrency delisted and rendered worthless while the leveraged products were forcibly liquidated, leaving him with massive losses.

It was not the first time. Early in their marriage, the husband had lost 10 million won ($7,070) in the stock market and begged A's forgiveness, promising never to do it again — a promise he did not keep.

At one point, while the two were watching news coverage of debt-fueled investing, A asked her husband directly whether he was doing anything like that. He told her he absolutely was not.

"Finding out that was a lie gives me chills," A said. "Now that I know he deceived me again, I feel I can no longer trust him and want a divorce."

After a fight, the husband left home and is now insisting they split the jeonse deposit and that both spouses must repay the debts together. A asked for a legal opinion on whether she could be held responsible for debts she had no knowledge of.

Attorney Bae Su-ji said disputes between couples over stock investments have become extremely common. "Excessive cryptocurrency or stock investment debt does not automatically constitute grounds for divorce," she said, "but if the behavior is repeated and extreme enough to seriously destabilize the household finances and irreparably destroy the trust that sustains married life, it can be recognized as 'other serious grounds making it difficult to continue the marriage' under Article 840, Clause 6 of the Civil Act."

On whether a spouse must share in the other's debts during asset division, Bae explained that debts one spouse incurs toward a third party during the marriage are in principle treated as personal debts and are not subject to division — unless they relate to everyday household expenses or were incurred in building shared assets. "The jeonse loan in this case is likely to be included in the asset division," she said.

However, she added, debts arising from high-risk speculative investments made unilaterally without the other spouse's knowledge are frequently excluded from division as personal debts. "If the investment funds were mixed with living expenses, housing costs or child-rearing costs, or if the debt directly corresponds to investment assets that still exist within the marriage, some portion could be recognized as subject to division," she said.

Bae also advised that A could seek consolation damages from her husband, noting that repeated investment failures causing serious harm to the household finances, compounded by verbal abuse and abandonment of the home, could well be recognized as grounds establishing fault for the breakdown of the marriage.


jshan@heraldcorp.com