When Is a Spouse Liable for the Other's Debts in Taiwan?

A Keelung court ordered a husband to repay the money he had borrowed and dismissed every claim against his ex-wife, whom the lender had sued alongside him. Months earlier, a New Taipei court went the other way on a hospital bill and ordered a wife to pay NT$2,464,623 jointly with her husband.

Both debts started as the husband's. What separated the outcomes was what each debt had paid for, and whether anyone proved it.

Each spouse pays his or her own debts

A loan your husband took out in his own name is, as a rule, his debt. Article 1023, paragraph 1 of Taiwan's Civil Code makes each spouse responsible for paying his or her own debts, and marriage alone does not change that. Paragraph 2 adds that a spouse who pays the other's debt with his or her own property may claim reimbursement, even while the marriage continues.

The exception: debts from family living expenses

Article 1003-1 builds the exception in two steps. Paragraph 1 is about the couple: unless the law or a contract provides otherwise, family living expenses are shared according to each spouse's economic capacity, household work or other circumstances. Paragraph 2 is about creditors: debts arising from those expenses bind both spouses jointly and severally.

What does that let a creditor do? Under Article 273, paragraph 1, the creditor of a joint and several obligation may demand all or part of the performance from one, several or all of the debtors, at the same time or one after another. For a household debt, the creditor may skip your spouse and ask you for all of it. How the two of you then share the cost is a matter between yourselves under Article 1003-1, paragraph 1.

More than three years in hospital: New Taipei, 2024

In October 2019 the husband was admitted for an enlarged prostate and had surgery the next day. Then came a stroke. Treatment continued until his discharge in January 2023, and the hospital sued him and his wife for the unpaid charges. The New Taipei District Court ruled at first instance on August 29, 2024 (111年度訴字第1294號).

Relying on Supreme Court precedent, the court held that necessary matters of clothing, food, housing, transport, education, recreation and medical care connected with family life are necessary acts of family life and count as daily household matters. After the stroke the husband depended entirely on others for his daily care, so the court found the treatment necessary. It classed the bill as a "debt arising from family living expenses" under Article 1003-1, paragraph 2, and ordered both spouses to pay it jointly, with 5% annual interest.

"Daily household matters" comes from Article 1003, whose first paragraph makes spouses each other's agents for those matters. If one spouse abuses that agency, the other may restrict it, but the restriction cannot be asserted against a third party acting in good faith (paragraph 2).

One fact limits what the case shows. The couple fought the hospital's claim on other grounds, yet they did not dispute the amount or deny that the wife owed payment under Article 1003, paragraph 1 and Article 1003-1. Whether a spouse who contests that obligation head-on would end up in the same place, this judgment cannot tell you.

Diapers, rent and the burden of proof: Keelung, 2025

The Keelung couple married in June 2021, had two children and divorced in November 2023. The husband's lender said he owed NT$669,160 borrowed during the marriage: money lent on many occasions over about a year from October 2022, plus overdue installments on money the lender had borrowed against a motorcycle and a car and passed on to him. The Keelung District Court ruled at first instance on April 7, 2025 (113年度訴字第602號).

In the lender's telling, the money had paid for diapers, milk powder and rent, so the ex-wife should be jointly liable under Article 1003-1. The lender also claimed that a further NT$17,000, sent in five transfers to her own bank account, was a loan to her personally. The husband did not dispute the borrowing. Some of it went on the household, he said, but that was the smaller part, and he had forgotten which was which.

He had to pay. She did not.

First, the husband's admission did not count against her. The court reasoned that whether the loans went to family living expenses could not be found one way for one co-defendant and another way for the other. His admission was on its face against his co-defendant's interest, so it had no effect for any defendant, himself included.

Second, the court placed the burden of proof on the lender, who had to prove the money was used for the couple's living expenses. Article 277 of the Code of Civil Procedure puts the burden of proving a fact on the party who asserts it in its own favor, unless the law provides otherwise or that would be clearly unfair in the circumstances.

Nothing the lender produced closed that gap. A chat in which the husband wrote that money was going "to her" for "milk powder and living expenses" concerned a loan not claimed in that lawsuit. The breakdown of uses, such as NT$11,000 for Lunar New Year red envelopes and NT$18,800 for furniture, was the lender's own work, and the ex-wife denied it. The husband also said he earned on average about NT$30,000 to NT$40,000 a month from a karaoke business he ran with others. Whether the household ran on borrowed money or on his income, the court concluded, was unclear.

Transfers into her account fared no better. The husband told the court he also used that account, and he and the lender had a long-running lending relationship. The transfers alone, the court found, proved neither an agreement to lend to her nor that a loan had been handed to her. Her message that the diapers were down to half a pack said nothing specific about that money.

None of this means a loan can never be a household debt. On these facts, the lender did not prove it.

Different nationalities, one household in Taiwan

Article 47 of Taiwan's Act Governing the Choice of Law in Civil Matters Involving Foreign Elements starts with the spouses' common national law for the effects of marriage. Without one, it applies the law of their common domicile. If they share neither, the law most closely connected with the marriage applies. Article 48 allows a written choice of either spouse's national or domicile law for the matrimonial property regime (paragraph 1). Without that agreement, or if it is invalid under the chosen law, paragraph 2 follows the same sequence. Neither paragraph applies to the spouses' real property where the law of the place where it lies requires special rules to be followed (paragraph 3).

An American and a Taiwanese national who share a domicile in Taiwan and made no written choice of law have no common national law, so both Article 47 and Article 48 lead to the law of their common domicile: Taiwan's. Couples who live abroad or signed a choice-of-law agreement need the question checked. Property division at divorce is discussed in Taiwan marital property division with an American spouse. For assets or debts in the United States, state law varies, and a US lawyer is the person to ask.

Signing your spouse's loan as guarantor or co-borrower makes it your own contract, which is a separate question. Debts left by a spouse who has died become a matter of inheritance, covered in Dying Without a Will in Taiwan. How a creditor seizes an account, and how to object, falls under separate enforcement rules.

If your worry is your Taiwan salary account, look first at when the debt arose and what it paid for. The ex-wife in Keelung escaped liability for her husband's loans because the lender never proved the money had gone on the household.

What a Taiwan lawyer can do in this situation

Work on a case like this starts with the demand letter or complaint: a Taiwan lawyer pins down what the debt was for and when it arose. To answer a "household expense" claim, the lawyer can gather the couple's bank statements, receipts and evidence of the borrowing spouse's own income. They can reply to the creditor and defend you in court; in Keelung, the lender bore the burden of proof. If you have already paid your spouse's personal debt with your own property, the lawyer can assess a reimbursement claim under Article 1023, paragraph 2. If your spouse is abusing the household agency, the lawyer can advise on a restriction under Article 1003, paragraph 2. Its limit remains: the restriction cannot be asserted against a third party in good faith. Where a divorce or property division is already under way, the lawyer can coordinate the two.

Hovering International Law Firm is at 7F-2, No. 35, Sec. 1, Chengde Rd., Datong Dist., Taipei City 103, Taiwan. For a consultation with an English-speaking lawyer in Taipei, you can email wei@hoveringlaw.com.tw with the papers you received and the dates of your marriage and of the debt.

Official sources

• Civil Code (Taiwan), Art. 273, Art. 1003, Art. 1003-1, Art. 1023 (current text)
• Code of Civil Procedure (Taiwan), Art. 277 (current text)
• Act Governing the Choice of Law in Civil Matters Involving Foreign Elements, Art. 47, Art. 48 (current text)
• New Taipei District Court civil judgment 111年度訴字第1294號 (August 29, 2024, first instance), Judicial Yuan judgment database
• Keelung District Court civil judgment 113年度訴字第602號 (April 7, 2025, first instance), Judicial Yuan judgment database

Checked: October 19, 2026