Your wife can legaly kill you !!!

"In Hong Kong, a betrayed wife is legally allowed to kill her adulterous husband, but may only do so with her bare hands.
The husband's lover may be killed in any manner desired."

is this true ?

[ Last edited by  twiceAweek at 5-7-2010 16:35 ]

That totally sucks if it is true!  I know that in the US there are several states that allow your wife to sue your mistress for "alienation of affection".  Kinda weird...

wow pretty insane. in korea, adultery is a crime punishable by a couple years in jail (cheated on party can bring suit), but not a defense as to killing haha.

Hey Twice (the real Twice):

Your nephew's gotten hold of your id and password!

No, this one is serious ... I couldn't believe there was a law like that in HK so I googled and everyone
living in HK better see this for themselves !!!
this law must be dated back to the 1900's but as far as I know its still valid !!!  

someone please shed some more light on this !!!

Holy crap, there is such a archaic rule in HK?!

Yeah but it has that bare hands only stipulation.

What I find interesting is the husband's lover can be killed by any means, man it really does suck to be the other woman

Is there a source?

I've just spent a good hour of my life googling and researching and can't find anywhere that states the source of this law. Certainly, this is not a defence that is recorded in the Halsbury's laws of Hong Kong.

In fact, one of the typical defences to murder is provocation, (which reduces the crime from murder to manslaughter) and the defence only applies if you kill whilst you "walk into the action", so I have grave doubts that this represents the law in Hong Kong.

Most of HK law is inherited from UK, so I can't see why there would be a law like this which specifically applies to HK. Most likely this is just a hoax just kept spreading because its so funny.

If its goes way back to pre-1897 it could be Qing dynasty law

And the corollary will be that a cheating HK wife can be locked in a pig carrier and drowned in the river!

Again, is there a source?

Only limited customary laws remain in HK, predominantly recognising concubines and inheritance/property matters. I've never heard of any criminal customary law being inherited, plus right now we're talking about a defence to a charge of murder, and so the whole system is modelled under English law and there is no "room" for customary law being imputed.

Plus even if its customary law its something that would be recorded in Halsbury's laws of Hong Kong and if its not mentioned there the chances are its not the laws of HK.

Yikes, now that's some scary shit.

I guess since no one has used this as a defense in many years, it was just forgotten or more like an urban legend kind of thing?

if the wife tries to kill the husband with only her bare hands and the husband killed her in self defense then we got a csi episode in the making. interesting law... the only other law i know that you are allowed to kill someone is the double jeopardy law, which i learned from watching the movie double jeopardy (good movie).

Ok folks, is this a hoax?
I also used google, yahoo, and came across many HK law sites. I even read up related martial law in HK and found nothing of this calibre.

Hey twice, every quote must have a reference in english text. If you simply want to test the plausibility of your alleging statement then why use quotation marks   Because heck, I almost believed it.... should I? To assert without proof or before proving is creating a fallacious argument!

I'm still browsing for sources...


[ Last edited by  Fifa at 6-7-2010 07:30 ]

I checked out the legislation website and found nothing. One of those viral hoaxes by the look of it. The site I checked was http://www.legislation.gov.hk/eng/rela.htm

In United States it depends on the jury system.

In theory a man can be driven so out of his mind if his spouse cheats on him.  If the jury accepts that a person was so
emotionally disturbed that no reasonable person can accept a situation.  If a jury believes this is true, then the jury may chose not guilty by reason of insanity.    Most judges reject the
insanity plea.

Usually if the person has a weapon, unless the weapon was a spontanious item.  For example, a brick lying on the ground
and was used in the murder.  Chances are very good for the insanity plea.

However usually people who use deadlier weapons such as swords, automatically are consider sane because they had the motive to murder their spouse.  In other words, if someone carried their weapon into murdering their spouse they had planned ahead of time to kill.

As a possible example.  So if a wife went crazy and killed her husband after finding out he cheated on her, while the husband was in the room with her.  If she went in to a beating swinging frenzy upon finding that out.  Since she killed with her bare hands, it would prove the insanity defense better.

In the lover.. in theory if the lover possibly could transmit an STD.  If the STD is considered "lethal force" by the courts.   For example a person can be charged with 2nd degree murder for
knowingly infecting another person with aids.  In America several people usually can be convicted for that sort of thing. So if the other person is a "murderer" and is in your house
uninvited, in states like Texas you may shoot the lover for
trespassing, and being a threat to personal health.

[ Last edited by  chewie10 at 6-7-2010 09:14 ]

Google ... hong kong law wife kill husband ...
the only reason I knew about this was it was reported of fox news a few days ago !

Yes, lots of "news" websites mention it. But so far I haven't found any of them referencing it back to an actual law.

So what does the jury say here, yeah pun intended, is this law for real or just some hoax?

I'm sure it probably existed at one time, but most likely changed, when we became more civilized lol.

There are a lot of laws that are archaic in the UK. That apparently never got repealed.

On further inspection most of these tend to be just urban myth.

I always like the one that said something along the lines of within the walls of (insert town near wales border) it is legal to kill a welshman on a Sunday using a longbow.

Pure B****hit but a nice idea

You mean Pre 1840's Only the New Territories were added in 1898.  That's why they were called the New Territories because they were newly added to HK at the time and where they 99 year lease came from.

HK island was ceded permenately to Britan in the 1840's. Of course they "chose" to return in anyways

Sorry for the impromptu history lesson