With the new Moroccan Family Code, a husband who wants to marry another women will have to solicit of the court and this will notify the wife and the bride, according to the study and translation published by Professor Caridad Ruiz-Almodóvar in volume 53 of the journal of Arab and Hebraic Studies.
This new code also suggests the possibility of including marriage without determining the dowry, restricting the practise of polygamy and the suppression of the wife’s duty of obeying her husband, making both equal in conjugal rights and duties.
The New Family Moroccan Code, enacted last year by Act n. 7003, repeals the code reviewed in 1993 and governs the private life of the Moroccan Moslem population. It consists of 400 sections distributed in seven books. Maliki juridical school has been chosen as a source for its study and translation.
According to the study carried out by Professor Caridad Ruiz-Almodóvar, besides including 103 more sections than the previous one and having a different name −it was called before Code of Personal Statute−, this code “involves an important legal transformation, which materializes in the attribution of a major role to justice eliminating certain abuses, protecting the children as it prefers their interests to those of their parents or relatives and suppressing the big differences between sexes, thanks to which the situation of Moroccan women has experimented, in this field, a great advance towards equality with men in all the fields except for inheritance, which has not been modified and maintains as in the Koran, so that women still inherit half as much as men”.
Advances for equality
The main novelties of this code are, according to Caridad Ruiz-Almodóvar, that “the family is a responsibility of both spouses; there is a period of five year after the code comes into force to solve the cases relating to marriage that, because of a case of force majeure, have not been able to register the marriage certificate; the age is the same, 18 years, for men and women, both for marriage capacitation, custody conclusion and majority; the guardian of the woman will not have to take part in the formalization of the marriage, as his presence will only be obligatory if necessary; the spouses will be authorized to formalize the marriage without determining the dowry; polygamy has been restricted, as it will be forbidden not only if there has been an injustice or clause that prevents it, but it must also have been authorized by the court and it will have to consider that there is an exceptional reason. If the husband wants to marry a new wife, he will have to solicit it of the court and notify the wife and the bride; the code includes the possibility of sharing out the properties acquired during the marriage, although it also maintains the division of the conjugal property; removes the wife’s duty of obeying her husband, making equal their conjugal rights and duties; eliminates of the documents for the marriage certificate the declaration relating to the virginity of the woman; the previous conception of repudiation has been banned, and has become a dissolution of the marriage that can be exercised by both spouses, under judicial control and fulfilling certain requirements, etc.
Referencia: Prof. Caridad Ruíz Almodóvar
Dpt. of Semitic Studies.
University of Granada.
Phone number: 958 243 577 (direct) / 958 243 572 (Department Head.)
E-mail. caridad@platon.ugr.es
