The Legislative Yuan “cleared its stocks” at the end of the year by passing several important bills. Among them, a bill to amend some articles of the Civil Code, along with the Enforcement Law for Part IV, Family Law of the Civil Code, was passed on Dec. 25, lowering the age of majority from 20 to 18. Meanwhile, for the sake of equality, the minimum age of marriage for both men and women will be the same — 18 years old, which is no change for men, but it had been 16 years old for women before the amendment. A buffer period was set before the amendments take effect on Jan. 1, 2023. This is the first major change of its kind in the Civil Code since its enactment and implementation in 1929.
Legislative Speaker You Si-kun, who presided at the meeting, said afterwards on his Facebook page that this is a prelude to the major task of amending the constitution. It has been the consensus of the ruling and opposition parties to revise the age threshold for the exercise of civil rights to 18 years old. The UK, France, and Germany changed their civil rights age threshold to 18 years old back in the 1970s. Taiwan’s neighbor Japan also completed such youth movement reforms in 2018.
On Dec. 30, the legislature also passed on its third reading an amendment to Article 1030-1 of the Civil Code, whereby, when filing for divorce, the interests or income through utilization of the property acquired by one party before the marriage relationship will not have to be distributed equally to both parties if the other party did not contribute to acquiring the assets or cooperate in their utilization.
Screen grab from the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy’s Facebook page 照片:台灣青年民主協會臉書
(Lin Lee-kai, Taipei Times)
立法院年終大清倉,陸續通過了數項重要法案。其中包括十二月二十五日通過「民法部分條文」與「民法親屬編施行法」修正案,將成年年齡由二十歲下修為十八歲;同時,基於男女平等,最低結婚年齡由男十八歲、女十六歲,修正為男女均為十八歲,並設緩衝期,定於民國一一二年一月一日施行。這是民法自一九二九年制訂施行以來的首度重大變革。
主持院會的立法院長游錫堃會後在臉書發文表示,這是為接下來的修憲工程拉開序幕。下修公民權至十八歲已是朝野共識,英國、法國、德國早在一九七○年代就把公民權下修至十八歲,鄰近的日本也於二○一八年完成這樣的青年運動改革。
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Liberty Times 照片:自由時報記者陳志曲
立法院亦於十二月三十日三讀通過民法第一○三○條之一修正草案,未來國人要是離婚,只要其中一方對婚前財產所生孳息及運用所得沒有貢獻或是協力,雙方就不必平均分配財產。
(台北時報林俐凱)
Rice is an essential ingredient in Taiwanese cuisine. Many foods are made of rice, adding more variety to our cooking, such as rice cake, or “gui.” Wagui is made by steaming rice flour batter in a bowl. The term “gui” refers to a type of food made from rice, while “wa” refers to a bowl. The pronunciation of “gui” in Taiwanese Hokkien is similar to the word for “nobility” in Chinese, so it is common for people to prepare various types of gui, including wagui, as offerings to the gods or ancestors,. 米是台灣重要的主食,用米製成的食品十分多元,豐富我們的飲食,如米做成的「粿」。粿的意思是米做成的糕點,碗粿是將在來米漿倒入碗中蒸熟,因而得名。粿因為音同「貴」,因此碗粿等粿食常用作供品祭拜神明和祖先。 nobility (n.) 高貴,高尚;貴族 offering (n.) 供品 While Taiwan may not be
Drive-through (or drive-thru) restaurants provide people with the immense convenience of being able to purchase and pick up meals without needing to leave their vehicles. These restaurants have been around for decades, and their success has spawned a number of equally handy services. The drive-through concept originated with the drive-in restaurant, the first of which was established in the US in 1921. Patrons would order and eat the food that was delivered to their cars by workers called “carhops.” Ten years later, a drive-through service was introduced, but it was not until 1947 that the first exclusively drive-through restaurant opened its
On Tuesday last week, the flame for this summer’s Paris Olympics was lit at the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games in southern Greece in a meticulously choreographed ceremony. It will then be carried through Greece for more than 5,000km before being handed over to French organizers at the Athens venue used for the first modern Olympics in 1896. The pageantry at Olympia has been an essential part of every Olympics for nearly 90 years since the Games in Berlin. It’s meant to provide an ineluctable link between the modern event and the ancient Greek original on which it was initially modelled. Once
A: “Forbes” magazine just revealed Hollywood’s top 10 highest-paid stars of 2023. B: How much did those superstars make last year? A: Denzel Washington was at No. 10, having made US$24 million, which is about NT$771 million. B: That’s an astronomical figure to me. A: No. 9 to No. 6 were: Ben Affleck with US$38 million, Jason Statham with US$41 million, Leonardo DiCaprio with US$41 million, and Jennifer Aniston with US$42 million. A: 《富比世》最近公布了好萊塢去年的片酬排行榜。 B: 大明星的片酬到底有多高? A: 第10名是丹佐華盛頓、片酬2400萬美元,大約7.7億台幣。 B: 天啊這根本是天文數字! A: 第9到6名是︰班艾佛列克、3800萬美元,傑森史塔森、4100萬美元,李奧納多狄卡皮歐、4100萬美元,珍妮佛安妮斯頓、4200萬美元。 (By Eddy Chang, Taipei Times/台北時報張聖恩)