A court in Kanagawa Prefecture has fined a mother on the run from an abusive husband for not registering her daughter's birth for more than 30 years, a rare case that sheds renewed light on the struggle facing those without a koseki family registration, a lawyer said.

The woman was fined ¥50,000 by a court in the city of Fujisawa in early August for breaking the Family Register Law. She filed a complaint against the decision, which was rejected. The woman is planning on appealing to the Yokohama District Court on Thursday.

According to lawyer Hiroshi Minami, the woman didn't register the birth of her daughter, now 33, when she bore her in 1982 with a man she had met after fleeing her former abusive husband a few years before.