The long and costly wait for a new personal status law

Bassant Soliman broadcast an hour-long video to her followers on April 12, describing the pressure and struggle of looking after her two children in the wake of her divorce. 

She left a final Facebook status that read, “Take care of my children.” Then, she ended her own life.  

Despite the publishing ban authorities rolled out in the incident’s wake to limit intrusion into the circumstances of Soliman’s death and the lives of her children, her story has prompted a wave of highly publicized conversation on television channels and in the halls of government about the failings of personal status laws in Egypt. 

These laws are not a simple framework. Questions of personal status — marriage, religious denomination, civil issues of family and inheritance, divorce and childcare — currently fall under a patchwork of laws and accommodate the preferences of the various religious authorities in Egypt.

But the failures of these laws, such as the absence of effective guarantees on child support payments or fair access for women of different denominations to initiate divorce proceedings or access inheritance, have led periodically to outbursts of social anger or frustration and calls for the legislative environment to be updated.

A history of attempts to overhaul and unify the laws on personal status stretches back over a century, spearheaded by social, primarily feminist, movements as well as state-led initiatives. 

And now, in the wake of Soliman’s death, the president has once again instructed his government to revive their efforts to present a personal status law to Parliament.

Voices in civil society and legal advocates in family dispute cases have already begun to doubt whether there is genuine political will to make the sweeping legal reforms required. 

The lawyers and civil society actors speaking to Mada Masr attribute the failures of previous efforts to friction between state and religious institutions, coupled with a lack of administrative capacity to play the role required of the state to implement the needed reforms — factors that the sources anticipated are not likely to have changed substantially despite the apparent momentum for legal reform at present.

What to expect from a new bill? 

The last personal status bill dates back to 2021 and was prepared by the government itself. But the 2021 bill faced backlash over several of its provisions.

For instance, the draft upheld the practice of verbal divorce, legally permitting men to divorce women verbally without bearing the burden of providing legal proof or documentation that the divorce has taken place. It also allowed for men to conduct second marriages without informing their first wife, and failed to provide a decisive mechanism for enforcing spousal support payments. 

The clause that sparked the strongest opposition was that empowering women’s legal guardians, often their father or another male relative, to petition courts for a marriage annulment on the woman’s behalf based on the guardian’s designation of her husband as "unsuitable." Women launched a campaign, Guardianship is my right, sharing their stories and asserting their right to determine their own marriage status based on their own assessment of their circumstances. 

A public debate also erupted the following year over a Ramadan drama series that depicted the suffering of a mother struggling to raise her daughters following marital separation. 

Civil society actors responded to both the campaign and the public response to the series by raising the call for legal reform. The president intervened to issue a mandate for a new law to be prepared “in days.”

In response, the National Council for Women, a government body, subsequently announced a comprehensive list of "legislative parameters and requirements" necessary for the law's issuance.

The council’s then-president Maya Morsy, who is now social solidarity minister, next met with several activists from women’s rights organizations to consolidate what the law would aim for. 

An attendee who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity says that Morsy gave a categorical assurance that the new law would restrict the practice of verbal divorce. Morsy also hinted that the legislation would likely revise child custody arrangements to remove some of the barriers to granting divorced fathers custody of their children, the source adds. 

Legal preference is currently for women in the nuclear family to get custody over and above children’s fathers, with preference going first to their mother, then to their maternal grandmother, then their paternal grandmother, before their father.

Following the withdrawal of the 2021 draft law in mid-2022, then-Justice Minister Omar Marwan acted on a presidential directive by forming a committee of ten judges, including two women, to draft a new personal status law. In December 2022, the president met with its chairman to request a single, comprehensive and accessible law that would also establish a family welfare fund to provide legal support or in the event of alimony disputes. 

This would mark a significant change from the current set-up, where personal status is governed by a network of laws, including a pair from the 1920s on personal status and spousal support payments, as well as a set introduced from 2000 onward to establish dispute litigation procedures and the family court system. 

The chair of the committee described at the time a set of the working articles, including terms that would grant judges new powers to handle urgent cases, establish a system to consolidate all family disputes before a single court and introduce measures to reduce divorce rates. 

The chair also described protections for the financial autonomy of each spouse and their respective shares of wealth acquired during the marriage, and requirements that divorces be officially registered in the same manner as marriages.

Although the government never formally announced the completion of that draft, the chairman confirmed a year ago — two and a half years after the committee's inception — that all 355 articles of the new law were finished and would be submitted to the Cabinet. 

However, the government has yet to announce a review of the finalized draft, refer it to the House of Representatives or clarify whether the same committee is overseeing the current updates.

Following the president’s instructions, Egypt’s Channel One reported on a proposed law that resembles the one from 2022. According to their description of the bill, it would introduce the family fund and would regulate verbal divorce to safeguard the legal and financial rights of women and children. It also suggests a significant reordering of the custody hierarchy, placing the father directly after the mother, and introduces a new visitation system to allow the parent who does not have custody to spend more time with their children.

Other key additions include streamlining educational guardianship procedures for mothers with custody and expediting cases related to alimony and deferred dowry. Finally, the draft empowers judges to handle urgent matters and mandates that all disputes involving a single family be consolidated under the jurisdiction of one court.

A lack of capacity or a lack of will?

So why has progress on submitting the law to Parliament been so slow? 

Feminist activist Elham Eidarous tells Mada Masr that the delay in approving personal status amendments is primarily due to the administrative apparatus’ inability to implement reforms on the ground. 

She cited the example of hosting rights, the system that regulates terms for non-custodial parents to have their children stay overnight. While the concept may appear fair in principle, its practical implementation depends on ensuring that children are returned to the parent with custody at the agreed time, says Eidarous. 

This is a level of state oversight that the government has consistently failed to provide, she concludes.

A similar issue arises around the question of alimony. To set a fair rate for these payments, there must first be an accurate assessment of a father's total income. But the state can typically only verify what that is for those in the public sector or in fixed-salary positions. 

Consequently, the burden of proving a father’s true income often falls on the wife, says Eidarous.

Another dimension of the issue, according to Eidarous, who is a co-founder of the Bread and Freedom Party that has not been granted legal recognition, involves internal friction within the state apparatus over provisions rejected by Islamic religious institutions. 

This is particularly evident in the matter of verbal or absentee divorce. While the president has appeared keen to regulate or restrict the practice, religious institutions have publicly voiced their opposition to such moves.

The clearest manifestation of the friction with religious institutions occurred in 2017. During a televised address, the president addressed the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar directly and suggested the need to restrict verbal divorce. He famously concluded his remarks by saying, "You’re exhausting me, Your Eminence."

A few days later, the Council of Senior Scholars at Al-Azhar responded with a statement reaffirming the validity of verbal divorce without the requirement of witnesses or documentation. This issue remains the most prominent feature of a deeper rift between the presidency and Al-Azhar.

The presidency was not the only entity to clash with Al-Azhar over personal status issues. In 2019, Al-Azhar announced that it had finalized its own draft law. At the time, lawmakers argued that Al-Azhar was overstepping its mandate by drafting legislation. The religious institution and the House of Representatives legislative committee fielded accusations of deliberately stalling the formal review of bills previously submitted by members of Parliament.

Gawahir al-Taher, director of the Access to Justice program at the Egyptian Women’s Issues Foundation, also tells Mada Masr that the need to reach a consensus with religious authorities is a primary reason for the glacial pace of the amendments. 

She anticipates that the state will not be able to propose amendments or edits to the existing laws, and that it is rather a question of drafting an entirely new law, which would explain why passing the legislation has been so difficult, she says.

However, institutional friction is not the only factor stalling the legislation. For Taher, there is also a sharp social divide between men’s groups demanding amendments in their favor, and women’s groups seeking reforms in the opposite direction.

Weeks before Soliman’s suicide, several Ramadan dramas portrayed the perspective of divorced fathers struggling to access and care for their children. Against this backdrop, dozens of fathers and paternal grandmothers organized a demonstration to demand a lower age of custody, the age which determines how long a child remains in the primary care of their mother, and the introduction of hosting rights to replace the current restricted visitation system.

These demands are continuously raised by social media campaigns such as the Egyptian Fathers’ Revolution to Change the Personal Status Law and the national initiative to reform family law and reduce the age of custody. 

These groups advocate for moving the father up the custodial hierarchy, amending alimony rules, and revising the regulations that grant the parent with custody the right to live in the marital home. Their agenda also includes lowering the age of custody from 15 years under the current law to seven for boys and nine for girls. It also calls for the abolition of khul, or wife-initiated divorce.

Given the degree of change called for, and the radical difference of the various visions for change, Azza Soliman, chair of the board of trustees at the Egyptian Women’s Issues Foundation, believes that genuine change will require a comprehensive dialogue involving all stakeholders, rather than the continuation of the process in secrecy.

The push continues

It’s the lack of a transparent process, she tells Mada Masr, that leads her to expect that any new changes introduced will likely be limited. 

Despite the current uproar, the believes the momentum over the past weeks is a reaction to Bassant Soliman’s suicide rather than a sign of genuine political will for radical change. 

This lack of resolve, she noted, is evident in the extreme slowness of the amendment process over the years. The bill’s momentum has remained closely tied to current events, she notes, warning that public interest may once again fade this time.

Soliman adds that the state’s track record in recent years reflects a lack of genuine concern for women’s rights, which she said is evident in other domains, such as the government's failure to fulfill the constitutional mandate requiring it establish an anti-discrimination commission.

Despite doubts regarding the current path, there have been incessant efforts to build traction toward a new law over recent years. 

These have come through party proposals, civil society organizations seeking a fair family law and legal challenges aimed at compelling the government to prepare and present a draft law to the House of Representatives. 

These were renewed in recent weeks, as several parties have announced their readiness to submit draft laws that have been in development for some time.

The latest of these proposals was prepared by the Egyptian Women’s Issues Foundation and adopted by the Bread and Freedom Party. It has already been sent to seven official bodies, including the presidency, with no response so far, Taher tells Mada Masr.

Soliman also tells Mada Masr that the foundation’s draft constitutes a unified personal status law that incorporates all current governing legislation. 

She notes that the draft law would unify the network of legal documents in one place, relocating the prohibitions on the legal documentation of underage marriage from the child law, for example, to a new outright ban on child marriage under a unified personal status law. 

The draft law also seeks to regulate polygamy by requiring men to file a judicial petition confirming that the first wife has been notified before pursuing a second marriage. 

This process would enable the court to review the husband’s economic, health and social standing and ensure the prospective wife is fully informed of these details.

Furthermore, the bill proposes regulating divorce through a court petition that specifies the grounds for the split. This would ensure that wives receive their full legal entitlements, regardless of who initiated the divorce proceedings, and conversely that women’s legal rights would be waived in cases where no legal grounds for divorce exist — a system that would substantially alter the current khul framework for divorce. 

Finally, the legislation stipulates joint guardianship over children both during the marriage and after its dissolution.

The draft law also stipulates that alimony should be proportionate to minimum wage and that the Family Fund should fully enforce alimony rulings. It proposes an amendment to the custody hierarchy, placing the father second in rank immediately after the mother. 

The parent without custody would also be granted the right to spend more time with the child, which may include overnight stays for one or more days based on variable criteria. These provisions include the establishment of mechanisms to ensure the child is safely returned to the custodial parent.

While the draft does not address personal status laws for Christians, it stipulates the right of a Christian mother to maintain custody of her children from a Muslim husband, or from a husband who converted to Islam, until they reach the age of 15. This provision grants her parity with Muslim mothers and replaces the current regulation, which limits her custodial rights after the child reaches the age of six.

Christians remain in waiting

The Cabinet approved on Wednesday a draft family law for Christians, which officials have said they plan to refer to Parliament soon. 

Personal status matters for Egyptian Christians are currently governed by 12 regulations, the most prominent of which are the Coptic Orthodox, Coptic Catholic and National Evangelical regulations. Although these address all personal status matters, they tend to be applied only in marriage and divorce cases where spouses are of the same creed and denomination. 

Egyptian churches began discussing a unified personal status bill for Christians in 2017. 

The new bill was finalized last year, according to MP Freddy al-Bayady, who tells Mada Masr that it was produced by a committee established by the Justice Ministry, which included church representatives tasked with providing input. According to Bayady, a member of the General Evangelical Council who helped draft his church’s proposal for the bill, the legislation introduces the first ever provision allowing for what effectively amounts to Christian divorce. Termed the "civil dissolution of marriage," this clause applies in cases where cohabitation is deemed impossible and separation has persisted for at least three years, provided that there are documented reconciliation attempts. This mechanism can be triggered by either spouse filing a petition for dissolution.

The bill also aims to address the popular practice of Christians switching to a different denomination to that of their spouse as the sole legal means to obtain a divorce. 

The draft also expands the evidentiary grounds for adultery to facilitate divorce, including proof of pregnancy during a husband’s absence, correspondence proving an extramarital affair or homosexuality, according to Bayady. He noted that the bill also permits divorce for incitement to debauchery or the concealment of material information before marriage.

It mandates that churches respond to requests for a second marriage within a six-month period, says Bayady, and permits inheritance equality between men and women, allowing a way out of the customary application of Islamic law in the court-mandated distribution of estates and shares to Christian heirs.

Despite Article 3 of the Constitution stipulating that the religious principles of Christian and Jewish Egyptians are the primary reference governing their personal status, some courts choose to apply Islamic inheritance provisions in inheritance cases involving Christians.

Beyond these provisions, the new draft amends the visitation system to allow non-custodial parents to host children for up to 15 consecutive days and stipulates that denying visits can forfeit the custodial parent’s custody rights, says Bayady. It also brings fathers second in line for custody. 

Another Church representative, speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, notes that discussions during the drafting process concluded with an agreement not to address adoption. 

Although permitted in Christianity, adoption is prohibited in Islam, and it was left out to avoid its conflict with Islamic doctrine provoking a public outcry, according to the representative.

He adds that there were fears that its inclusion might lead some to believe that Christians would be permitted to adopt Muslim children, even though this could have been avoided by restricting adoption to children of known Christian parentage.