Maryland Court of Appeals Refuses to Enforce Talaq Divorce

As reported in Thursday's Washington Post, the Maryland Court of Appeals has refused to afford comity to the terms of Pakistani divorce decree issued in accordance with the Islamic religious concept of "talaq". The Post provides this summary of the events leading to the Court's decision:

After his wife of more than two decades filed for divorce in Montgomery County Circuit Court, Irfan Aleem responded in writing in 2003, and not just in court.

Aleem went to the Pakistani Embassy in the District, where he executed a written document that asserted he was divorcing Farah Aleem. He performed "talaq," exercising a provision of Islamic religious and Pakistani secular law that allows husbands to divorce their wives by declaring "I divorce thee" three times. In Muslim countries, men have used talaq to leave their wives for centuries.

... Irfan Aleem, who worked for years as an economist with the World Bank, is worth about $2 million, half of which Farah Aleem is entitled to under Maryland law. When Irfan Aleem tried to divorce his wife under the concept of talaq, a sum of $2,500 was mentioned as a "full and final" settlement, according to the appellate decision.

That amount was written into the marriage contract Farah Aleem signed the day she married him in their native Pakistan in 1980, according to the appellate decision. The contract was in accordance with Pakistani custom. At the time, he was 29 and she was 18. The couple moved to the Washington area in 1985.

In the ruling, the Court found that enforcing the terms of the talaq divorce would contradict the public policy of the state with regard to the distribution of marital property. Central to the Court's conclusion was the lack of due process provided to the woman in such a process, which offers the man alone the unilateral prerogative to terminate the marriage.  The problems arising when secular courts are asked to enforce principles of religious law were examined in a prior post.  When interviewed for the Post article, Muneer Fareed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America, is quoted as saying, "For the most part, Muslims expected this kind of ruling.The contrary would be a surprise to them. They do not expect the U.S. legal system to give full recognition of talaq."

JFB