A mother may not give up custody of her children

The Court of Cassation confirmed that custody is not an absolute right of the custodian that he can relinquish by agreement or mutual consent, but rather a right to God Almighty or to the child in custody himself. The court considered in a ruling it issued that it is not permissible for a mother to relinquish custody of her children, because that is considered a waiver of a right owned by others, and the court overturned. An appeals ruling was issued to assign custody of two children to their paternal grandmother, and it was considered a flawed ruling.

A man filed a lawsuit before the Abu Dhabi Court of First Instance, requesting at its conclusion to prove the validity and validity of two declarations written by his ex-wife, which included her relinquishing custody of her two children from him and their maintenance, and ruling that her custody of them be dropped and that they be included in him, and her right to receive their maintenance based on these two declarations be dropped, as explained in his lawsuit. That the defendant was his wife under a legal contract, and after she gave birth to the two children, he divorced her and relinquished their custody to him, except She is collecting their expenses from him illegally.

The mother of the plaintiff (the father) also intervened in the case, and requested that custody be dropped from the mother of the two children, and the original lawsuit submitted by her son be rejected, and she demanded that custody be assigned to her, given their mother’s dishonesty and her lack of interest in the two children. The court of first instance ruled to accept the intervention of the grandmother of the two children and prove her custody of her two grandchildren, with Proving its right to claim all their expenses and entitlements previously imposed on them, and obligating the plaintiff and defendant to pay the expenses of intervening in the case.

The court ruled on the merits of the original case to prove the validity and effectiveness of the two declarations issued by the defendant relinquishing custody of her two sons, obliging her to hand them over to the grandmother, and dropping her right to demand maintenance for them from the date of their handover. The Court of Appeal ruled to uphold this ruling, which prompted the mother to appeal the ruling before the Court of Cassation. , saying in the grounds of appeal that the ruling was marred by an error in applying the law and a deficiency in justification, because the ruling violated the second paragraph of Article (110) of the Personal Status Law, which stipulates It stipulates that it is not permissible to agree to drop child support and custody. This text is taken from the fact that custody is a right of God or the child in custody, and not a right of the custodian, and therefore it is not permissible to waive it or conclude an agreement regarding it, because that is considered a disposal of the right of others, and therefore it is invalid.

She added in the reasons for her appeal that her relinquishment of custody of her two children was intended to mean that she wanted to marry a foreigner, but that marriage did not take place, and she is still divorced from the appellant, and she has the right to custody of her two children, and the two children declared before the court that they reside permanently with their mother, and they want to To continue with her, and they have never lived with their father or paternal grandmother.

The Court of Cassation accepted this appeal, and said that although it is proven that the appellant, when her husband divorced her, ceded custody to him of her two children, and handed them over to him on the basis that she wanted to marry another, her renunciation is considered related to the right of others, because custody – as some jurists said – is a right. To the child in custody or to God Almighty, and therefore the custodian’s right to custody is not forfeited by waiver.