Another court story

Intermarrying means a double divorce for some

By Uroos Ahmed

KARACHI: Some of the messiest divorces can involve intermarriages in which two members or more of one family marry into another, some lawyers told Daily Times.

While intermarrying is a popular tradition, few families realize while entering the contracts, that if one of the couples runs aground, the divorce can have just as bad an effect on the other couple. Advocate Bilal related the story of two families that went through this. “It was a simple case of vata sata in which one husband divorced his wife on the grounds that she couldn’t conceive,” he said, “but this resulted in the divorce of his own sister who was married for five years with two children only because her husband retaliated to the divorce of his sister.”

Some people reason that intermarrying is a deterrent to a break-up as double family links have been created. “The general assumption in such cases is that the couple will be made to reconcile due to family pressure and the case will not go very far as there is dirty family politics involved in these matters,” said Advocate Shahid. He gave the example of a case he has been working on for the past eight months in which his client and her sister married two brothers living in the same house. When his client filed for khula in September she had provided proof that her husband was not earning enough and that she had been supporting him and their three children by working as a sweeper in two houses and a school. “She came with the firm conviction of getting khula and latter acquiring custody of her children as there had been incidents of physical abuse by her husband and she was scared for her daughters,” Shahid said. Once the evidence for the defendant began his client backed out, saying she had reconciled with her husband and would withdraw her case. “However, she came back after two months and filed for khula again.”

Advocate Jamal Agha said that ironically such cases were common in families that considered divorce taboo. But they are also common in ‘wata sata’ or the tribal custom of spousal exchanges to settle disputes. “This is common mostly in the Sindh interior courts or in the Punjab,” said Advocate Bilal, “although you do get these case in the city courts.”

An estimated five thousand divorce cases are pending each month due to adjournments, the lawyers added. The delays add to the stress and strain. “Apart from the recent backlog due to the protests, on a regular basis over the year 2006 approximately 16,000 divorce cases were carried forward to 2007,” said Mushtaq, a registrar at the city courts.

Lawyers said that they felt that the litigation, especially for cases of khula, is complying with the fast track system that has yet to be established properly in everyday court proceedings. “The reason why these cases take time to reach a final order lies with the plaintiff’s own actions as we know that the lower and lower middle classes opt for legal aid as a last resort,” said Advocate Shahid. For him, a majority of the cases were pending as some domestic issue or the other prevented the plaintiff or the defendant from either coming to court or providing sufficient evidence.