Daughter sues parents for ‘embezzling’ US$9,200 of red envelope money
All money should go to the intended recipient, according to a judicial ruling. But not everyone agrees
Chinese internet users have been arguing about whether red envelopes – filled with cash and given as gifts during the Lunar New Year – should go to children or their parents, after a court published rulings on several cases.
The court in Jinan, eastern China’s Shandong province, published the information on its official Weibo account on Sunday.
The most recent case involved a university student from southwestern China’s Yunnan province, who sued her parents in 2016 claiming that they had embezzled 58,000 yuan (US$9,200) from red envelopes given to her as gifts over the years.
The woman, identified only as Juan, resorted to legal action after her mother and father, who are now divorced, refused to pay her university tuition fees. The court ruled in her favour and ordered her parents to pay her 1,500 yuan a month.
Of the other cases listed by the Jinan court, the one involving the most money concerned a man who, along with his three children, successfully sued his former wife – their mother – for taking 560,000 yuan worth of red envelope cash that the plaintiffs claimed belonged to the children.
A court in the mother’s home city of Yueqing, eastern China’s Zhejiang province, ruled against her, saying that she misappropriated the money – which had been gifted to the children by their paternal grandmother in 2012 – when the couple got divorced.