The change involves changing a single word in the marital contract, something that a very large majority of women most likely do not notice. But even if they did they would probably not realize the legal consequences of the change, particularly because the word is an Arabic term, and not a Persian one.
Here is the background. Since about 70 years ago marriage contracts in Iran have contained a clause about alimony, in which a man guarantees to pay a certain amount of money to his wife. Legally, this provision can be invoked by women at any time at will. If it is, the husband is under a legal obligation to pay the alimony to his wife immediately upon a woman’s request. A woman can make this demand immediately after the marriage certificate is signed, thus forcing her husband to make the transfer. This has been a very important provision of the marital contract for women in Iran because while wives normally do not ask for their alimony while they are still married, this does provide them with a resource in case the marriage fails.
Under Iranian law, the right of divorce belongs to the husband. On a wife’s request, a divorce would only be granted after the passage of a difficult process through which mistreatment by the husband has to be proved or it has to be shown that the husband was suffering from a serious mental or physical illness. The conditions for proving these situations are so difficult that many women who desire to end the marriage submit to the situation and stay with their husbands for the rest of their life rather than attempt to break away and sue for divorce. Under these legally discriminating conditions, the only recourse that wives who live in unhappy marriages have is to demand their alimony, thus forcing the husband to pay the contractual alimony amount. So a wife went to court and demanded her alimony, the husband would be legally forced to pay her the agreed amount. If he fails or cannot pay the amount, then the wife has the upper hand to demand that he agree with a divorce in return for her foregoing her alimony demand. But for many women this strategy does not free them from their unhappy marriage because they are either not willing to go to court to demand their alimony or because their husbands actually agree to pay the alimony amount rather than break their marriage. Still, this method has been one way for an unhappy wife to free herself from her husband.
But the wording change that now appears in the marital contract unfortunately removes this option for women. Instead of the provision that requires the husband to immediately pay the demanded alimony, the new term in the contract says the payment can be made “whenever the husband is capable” of doing it (in contrast to the original “whenever the wife demands it”). This change means that a woman who wishes to end her marriage is not only deprived of divorce, but is deprived of her alimony as well. The husband can free himself from paying the alimony by claiming that he is not capable of doing at the time. And now that economic conditions are tight for almost everybody, particularly the middle class in Iran, this excuse and argument by the husband falls on sympathetic ears.
So in view of the hardening conditions for married women, does this mean that women can no longer use the marital card to secure a divorce? I believe that this option has not been completely negated, even though its use has become much more difficult. Even under the new conditions, women can at the time of marriage insist on their rights and prevent the negation of their divorce options by insisting that a clause be included in the marital contract that would oblige the husband to “pay the alimony immediately on demand”. With this clause in place, if a husband in incapable of paying the alimony when demanded by the wife, she can still forego her demand in return for getting her husband’s consent for a divorce.
Adding this provision clearly depends on how insistent women are during the writing of the marriage contract and how successful they are in swaying their to-be-husband to accept this provision. And certainly prior to the marriage they still have leverage to accomplish this.
The question of course still remains what percent of women are actually aware of the change in wording that is now being included in the marital contract. Most certainly the number is not very high.
Therefore it appears that in addition to the long term battles to secure their rights, women rights activists also need to make others aware of this change in the marital contract and the options that to-be-wives have in negating the change in wording.
More specifically, I invite every person who has read this article to explain the situation to five women, relatives or acquaintances. This is clearly the least one can do to confront the measures of those who stand against women’s rights.
