The UAE government issued a federal decree law regarding the new Personal Status Law, which provides a comprehensive and integrated legal framework for regulating personal status matters, with the aim of supporting community cohesion, family stability, and protecting the family’s entity, in a way that enhances its role in society and its effective participation in community development.
The decree-law also aims to keep pace with the developments taking place in the country, as it is characterized by the introduction of provisions for issues that are regulated for the first time.
First, it expanded in addressing some important issues, and addressed emerging issues that directly affect the conditions of society. The provisions of the new law were characterized by flexibility, facilitation of procedures, and unification of legal concepts and terms.
Facilitating and expediting procedures
The decree law gave flexibility to the personal status judge to rule in accordance with Islamic law if he did not find a text in the law, without restricting it to certain doctrines, as required by the interest. It also grants the supervising judge, based on the principle of shortening the procedures, the authority to decide whether to refer the case to correctional and family guidance centers from Failure to do so before presenting it to the competent court, in contrast to the previous law, which required presenting it to family guidance committees for the case to be accepted before the court.
The decree law excludes matters of will, inheritance, and the like, urgent and temporary lawsuits, urgent and temporary orders regarding alimony, custody, and guardianship, and lawsuits in which conciliation is not envisaged, such as lawsuits proving marriage and proving divorce, from being presented to correctional and family guidance centers to speed up the resolution of these urgent disputes.
The Decree-Law sets the deadline for appeal and cassation in rulings issued in personal status matters, stipulated in the Decree-Law, to be 30 days.
The new law reorganizes the provisions related to the return of gifts and dowry in the event of abandonment of the engagement, as the gifts that may be returned are specified as gifts conditional on the completion of the marriage, and precious gifts, the value of each of which exceeds 25 thousand dirhams if they are current, otherwise at the same amount, or their value on the day they are received. Unless the gift is consumable in nature.
Age of marriage and jurisdiction of marriage
The Decree-Law stipulates that the age of marriage in applying its provisions is when a person reaches 18 Gregorian years, and the Council of Ministers issues a decision to regulate marriages below this age. The Decree-Law also introduces a provision that enables spouses who have not reached the age of majority to take over matters related to marriage without the need to Resorting to the legal guardian or guardian to facilitate their affairs.
The new decree law introduces provisions to facilitate the transfer of the guardianship of marriage to the court, so that it guarantees the woman’s right to marry a suitable man whom she has agreed to, and the transfer of the guardianship of marriage to the court in the event that her guardian refuses to marry her, in addition to not requiring the guardian’s approval to conclude the marriage contract for the non-citizen Muslim wife, who Her nationality law does not require her to have a guardian in marriage.
The provisions of the Decree-Law regulate the wife’s right to the marital home, if the marital home is hers or she rents or provides it, or if she shares ownership or rent of it jointly with her husband. It also specifies the categories that may live in the marital home and the conditions governing them.
The decree law requires the husband to document the divorce or review it before the competent court, while specifying a mandatory period for documenting the divorce or review, a maximum of 15 days from the date of its occurrence, and gives the woman the right to compensation equivalent to alimony if the divorce is not documented within the specified period, in order to preserve the wife’s right. To prevent any loss of its interest.
The decree-law also allows either spouse to request a divorce due to harm, in the event that the spouse is addicted to drugs, psychotropic substances, or intoxicants, which preserves the right of the spouses not to force either of them to live with an addicted person who does not trust himself and his family.
In the context of simplifying the procedures for examining cases of annulment of the marriage contract due to harm and shortening their duration, the decree shortens the arbitration period to 60 days instead of 90 days in the previous law, after which the ruling is issued.
Amending custody provisions
The new decree law includes an amendment to the provisions related to custody, emphasizing the importance of taking into account the interest of the child in the first place in all rulings, and preventing bargaining of the rights of the child in custody between the spouses after divorce.
The age for the end of custody was raised when the child in custody reaches 18 years of age, and it is the same for males and females, in contrast to the previous law, which specifies the end of custody for women when the male reaches 11 years old and the female reaches 13 years old.
A provision was also introduced that gives the child in custody the right to choose to reside with either of his parents after he reaches the age of 15 years of age, and a review has been made in the event that the custodian is a mother of a religion other than the child in custody, so that the ruling is up to the discretion of the court according to what is required by the interests of the child in custody, in contrast to the previous law which stipulates The non-Muslim mother’s custody ends when the child in custody completes five years.
The will
The decree law introduced additional texts to regulate the provisions of the will, so that the will is valid even if the testator and the legatee differ in religion, whether the will is between spouses, relatives, or third parties. A text was also introduced that allows the legatee to return an inheritance when it is impossible to implement the will for any reason. And the introduction of a text that if there is no heir for the deceased, then the estate takes the ruling of charitable endowments under the supervision of the concerned authorities after the approval of the competent court.
The decree-law also stipulates that if the bequeathed property is not permissible to be owned by the legatee in accordance with applicable legislation, the court may decide to transfer the legatee’s right to the corresponding price within the limits of the will or its equivalent.
Penalties
The decree law introduced penalties amounting to imprisonment or a fine of not less than 5,000 dirhams and not more than 100,000 dirhams, or one of these two penalties, for acts related to assaulting the funds of minors, traveling with a child without permission, squandering and seizing inheritance funds, and abuse, infringement, or Neglecting one’s parents, leaving them without care, or refraining from spending on them when it is necessary to support them.
It is not permissible, according to the provisions of the Decree Law, to file a criminal lawsuit regarding these acts, except based on a complaint from the party concerned. The criminal lawsuit will lapse if the waiver is made after the crime occurs and before it is decided by a final ruling. If the waiver is made after the ruling becomes final, its implementation will be suspended.
. The decree law was characterized by the introduction of provisions for matters regulated for the first time.
