BEIJING: A Chinese woman who married 26 times is now caught in a legal tangle. Her problem is not the marriage law, but the rules concerning the government’s family planning policy.

The 40-year old woman from Shuyang county in Jiangsu province recently discovered she was made pregnant by a former husband. She then rid herself of the then husband and remarried the one who had made her pregnant. When she went to register the child, the family planning authorities discovered the child’s father already had two children with another woman in the past. So, he was not entitled to register a third child under his name. Faced with a situation where her child would have no legal father, the woman went back to the man she had abandoned weeks ago. He being childless was excited to be a father.

Meanwhile, the government said the much-married woman will face bigamy charges unless she divorces the man who gave her the child. She is expected to remarry the childless man soon, the reports said.

The woman had earlier remarried nine of her ex-husbands. The number of men she had married and remarried is 15, the reports said.