DOHA: A legal expert has urged the government to set up a corpus from which divorced women with children under their legal custody could be provided with funds to support themselves until their former husbands began paying them alimony (maintenance).
The expert said such a fund was necessary because divorcees with no income and children in their custody faced problems as long as they were not paid alimony.
Divorce cases and those to claim children’s custody take time to settle because the family law does not have a separate procedural law.
Then, litigants go in appeal, which means cases can remain pending for long and until settled, the women and children in their legal custody do not get alimony.
Sonia Malak, from Qatar University’s Law College, told a symposium that a state-backed corpus was needed on an urgent basis to support divorcees and children under their legal custody until they began receiving alimony.
Their former husbands can be made to repay alimony given away to them and for that a court must deduct money from their salary or attach their properties.
“From the state corpus money to be given to divorcees and their children should be treated as a loan,” Malak said.
Repayment of loans by former husbands should be regulated under the criminal law so that if a husband fails to comply with conditions he could be jailed.
The symposium was held by Legal Studies Centre of the Ministry of Justice. Its head Mariam Arab said Family Law No. 22 of 2006 did not have a separate procedural law, which made courts to take a lot of time to settle cases of divorce, inheritance and custody of children.
A procedural law is all about the due process or rules by which a court hears and determines what happens in a lawsuit. In the absence of procedure law for Family Law, civil procedural law applies to solving family-related litigations.
At the symposium, experts also described the method of serving summons on the parties to a dispute as archaic. “We must think of making suitable changes to the system,” said Mohsin Al Qadi, from Court of Appeals.
He said summons in family and marriage-related disputes are worded generally. For example, the party to a dispute is called to the court and no reason is specified. “There is the need to mention in a summons ‘you are needed in the court in a case of divorce filed by your spouse’,” said Al Qadi, citing an example. If the case is about children’s custody, that should be mentioned in a summons, he added.
The Peninsula
