Karachi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday remarked during a hearing that marriages could not be considered dissolved without completion of legal procedures, holding that a verbal divorce held no legal value. The SC Karachi registry was hearing a case of a woman demanding monthly expenses from her husband. The court ordered the husband to pay for all the necessities.
Applicant Rasheed Ahmed Qureshi’s lawyer earlier said that his client had verbally given a divorce to his wife Sufiya Rasheed, therefore he was not responsible to pay for her monthly expenses. The court inquired where was the divorce given and also sought related documents.
Then, the lawyer reiterated that his witness gave an oral divorce to his wife and the subordinate court had ordered the client to pay Rs5,000 monthly expense to her, against which they submitted an application.
Justice Sajjad Ali Shah then observed that divorce was incomplete without completion of legal requirements. A subordinate court can set Rs25,000 as monthly expense instead of Rs5,000 if the court deemed fit. Dismissing the appeal, the court ruled that monthly expense was the right of the wife.
In another case, for the first time, a law was proposed in the Sindh Assembly giving rights to Hindu widows to re-marry of their own will. Presently, a Hindu woman spends her entire life alone after the death of her husband in March.
“We want to get rid of old and outdated customs, which is why we are going to amend the law and give rights to widows to remarry after six months of ‘iddah’,” Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) parliamentary leader Nand Kumar said. He moved an amendment on Thursday to the Sindh Hindu Marriage Act.
Published in Daily Times, March 14th 2018.
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