House Speaker Hisham Badawi on Monday referred the draft Family Law and the draft Family Law for Egyptian Christians to a joint parliamentary committee for review and reports.
The referrals came at the start of Monday’s plenary session, when Badawi sent five draft laws submitted by the government and nine submitted by one-tenth of House members to specialized committees.
The Family Law will regulate the personal status of Muslims and contains certain provisions common to Muslims and Christians alike, such as guardianship over money, while the other bill regulates the personal status of Egyptian Christians.
News websites have published details of the family law bill for Egyptian Christians, for whom marriage is defined as a “permanent sacred religious bond” entered into publicly between one man and one woman.
Article 1 stipulates that the law’s provisions apply to six main denominations in Egypt: Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Protestants, and Catholics.
For matters not explicitly addressed in the bill, each church’s religious rules apply, provided they do not violate public order.
The bill requires couples seeking to formalize an engagement to submit an official medical certificate and a certificate proving there are no religious impediments. It also requires the engagement to be recorded in an official document that includes details of the “shabka (engagement jewelry), gifts, and the date set for the marriage.”
If the fiancé breaks off the engagement without an acceptable reason, the bill says, he is not entitled to recover the engagement jewelry, while the fiancée must return it if she is the one who ends the engagement.
The bill requires a man about to marry to submit a “pre-nuptial agreement” guaranteeing the wife a sum of money or monthly alimony in certain cases, such as divorce or annulment of the marriage, provided this is recorded in an annex to the marriage contract.
If a party seeks a divorce through the courts, the bill introduces a “mandatory reconciliation” mechanism, under which the court must offer reconciliation and appoint “two arbiters from the families of the spouses” to try to reunite them within a period not exceeding 60 days.
These detailed provisions follow the Cabinet’s announcement last month that it had approved the draft family law for Egyptian Christians, in line with presidential directives to expedite the completion of personal status laws, but without disclosing the bill’s provisions. Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly also said the bills on family law for Muslims and Christians and the Family Support Fund would be referred to parliament successively on a weekly basis.
The bill has drawn criticism from rights advocates. During a dialogue roundtable organized by the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance on Sunday evening on the personal status bill for Christians, journalist Karima Kamal criticized the government’s assurances that it had held a community dialogue on the bill, saying, “We haven’t seen any community dialogue. We are the community, so where is this dialogue, and when did it happen?!”
