He Sent His Mistress RMB 25.75 Million. She Sent Back RMB 22.58 Million. The Court Ordered RMB 3.17 Million.

The facts first. Over roughly four years, Li sent RMB 25.75 million to Zeng, a woman he was seeing outside his marriage. Zeng sent RMB 22.58 million back. Wang, Li’s wife, said Li had given away marital property without her consent. She demanded all of it back. The second-instance court offset the two streams and ordered Zeng to return RMB 3.17 million. Zeng sought retrial. The Liaoning High People’s Court refused.

The obvious objection says the gift is void, so everything should come back. Chinese law mostly agrees with the first half. A gift made to keep an extramarital relationship going violates public order and good morals. Article 153(2) of the Civil Code makes such an act void. Article 157 requires the recipient to return property acquired through a void act. Article 1062 gives spouses equal rights over marital property. A 2025 judicial interpretation repeats the rule for gifts made in violation of the duty of fidelity.

The court did not reject that rule. It could not apply it to one clean number.

RMB 25.75 million was not one gift. It was many transfers over four years. No notes. No item-by-item explanation. Zeng also sent RMB 22.58 million. No notes. She said she was Li’s company finance officer. Some payments, she said, repaid loans, collected interest, or went to third parties at Li’s instruction. She had IOUs and texts. They did not match the transfers one by one.

The court could not treat all RMB 25.75 million as gifts because some of it might have been loans, pass-through payments, or payments for others. It also could not sort every transfer. Four years, two directions, nearly RMB 50 million. That is not a realistic trial exercise.

So the court used a net figure. It treated the transfers as one pool, offset what could be offset, and used the unexplained difference, RMB 3.17 million, as the restitution base. The court did not bless the whole RMB 25.75 million. It found that after both sides moved money, the amount Zeng could not justify was RMB 3.17 million.

The objection remains: void gift, full return. But restitution only reaches property acquired through the void act. If part of Zeng’s RMB 22.58 million was repayment or a payment for Li, that part should not be in the base. The net rule is a conservative estimate when the paper trail fails.

The fight is over proof. Wang had to show gifts. The court in effect told Zeng to explain the difference. The effect was to put the burden on Zeng, the finance officer who handled the money, to show why the net amount was legitimate. That allocation is debatable. It also follows from who made the mess. Li started the transfers. Zeng handled them. Neither kept clean records. When the party who controls the records cannot explain them, courts often make that party carry the loss.

Zeng’s defense was that the records were too messy to sort. That defense rarely works. A claim that a payment was a loan or a payment for someone else needs evidence: an IOU, a contract, chat logs, invoices, accounting entries, third-party receipts. Her materials did not line up with the transfers. Saying “it was all pass-through money” does not shrink the base without item-by-item proof.

A Jinan case shows how far the net rule can bend. A husband sent more than RMB 5 million. The reverse transfers almost matched. The court ordered RMB 5,483 back. The judge said an affair does not turn every transfer into a gift. Put RMB 5,483 next to RMB 3.17 million. The rule works as an evidence rule, not a discount rate.

What this case teaches: validity is principle. Restitution is proof. The affair does not make the gift valid. But the spouse who wants money back still has to deal with the reverse flow and the missing notes. A blanket claim that “all of it was a gift” invites the net rule. A blanket claim that “all of it was business” fails without records. Courts will count what they can see and push the unexplained difference onto the side that should have kept better books.

RMB 3.17 million is the amount left after the evidence funnel, not the moral price of the affair. The law dislikes the gift. It still needs a number.