Divorce in Kuwait .. Strange stories and disturbing rise

Mahmoud Kafrawi - Kuwait

In the early days of marriage, the young doctor faced a problem with the operation of the modern washing machine, and then began looking for her "brochure" to understand how she worked better.

The Kuwaiti doctor brought the booklet and began reading aloud to the husband, one of her cousins, but it was not up to him, according to the story of a close friend of the wife Mona Hussein.

The divorce situation is an eternal problem for some Kuwaiti girls. Some tribes still refuse to marry girls from outside the tribe for whatever reasons, in exchange for the leniency of marrying their cousins, regardless of the difference in the level of education.

Divorce is not the most unusual case of divorce. According to a story seen by Al-Jazeera Net, a dispute between two brothers while playing cards (or coyote or janjafa) forced one of his sons to divorce his wife, the daughter of his brother who had quarreled with him.

Mistakes of wives
Maryam Ibrahim recounts her suffering with her ex-husband and how she changed after about five years of happy marriage, noting that it started to travel to an Asian country with a friend and then the husband returns to another person who goes out alone and stay in suspicious places until the story ends one day When she returned to her home early on her return from work, she found him with another lady in her bedroom.

The divorce cases do not depend on the husband's mistakes. Mary also tells of a divorce case between her friend and her husband, who married a love story that was witnessed by everyone. This is due to the differences between the wife and the wife at the expense of her home.

Recent statistics of psychologists and sociologists are disturbing, reflecting a remarkable growth in divorces in Kuwaiti society, especially during the first years of marriage.

A recent study by the Statistics Department of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Justice showed that the total number of divorces during the period from 2007 to 2017 was 71445 cases.

According to the Ministry of Justice study, in 2014 there were about 6904 cases of divorce compared to 13441 marriages, while in 2015 saw about 7327 divorce cases compared to 15412 marriages.

The study also showed that the divorce cases amounted to 7223 compared to 14693 marriages in 2016, and the year 2017 was about 7433 divorce cases compared to 13932 marriages.

With a simple computer, the divorce rate is 20.3 divorce cases per day in 2017 - for example - at a time when marriages reached 38.1 cases per day.

The local newspaper Al-Qabas pointed out that the first three months of 2018 witnessed 2995 cases of marriage compared to 1985 divorce cases, with 33 marriages and 22 divorces per day.

Reasons for Divorce
The previous stories intersect with the results of a Justice Ministry study recently published by a number of local newspapers, which identified 37 reasons for divorce, including abuse, marital control, incompatibility in the special relationship, differences in educational level, parental intervention and sometimes stubbornness.

It is noteworthy that the study also referred to the role of the Kuwaiti Personal Status Law in encouraging women in some cases to seek divorce as a result of the benefits it guarantees after separation.

The Social Welfare Law provides for a monthly salary of 400 dinars (about 1,300 dollars) and a right to a housing loan of 70,000 dinars (230,000 dollars). The law obliges the husband, in addition to the maintenance of the children and the rent of the house, to provide a driver, For a divorced woman if he is free, he is well off.

According to Professor of Family Sociology at the University of Kuwait Fahad Al-Nasser, the absence of the engagement period in Kuwaiti society and the adoption of Kuwaiti culture on the marriage contract directly contributed to the increase in divorce rates.

Al-Naser assured Al-Jazeera Net that the ease of personal status laws also contribute to this matter. The man does not need more than his civil ID card, filling out a data form and paying three dinars (about $ 10) for the family's demolition.

He adds that the changes witnessed by the community also contributed to the disappearance of the extended family in which newly married couples live in the parents, where their presence represents an important opportunity to intervene in times of crisis compared to the current reality, which promotes the independence of newlyweds to form together the so-called nuclear family, Inside them often only if the situation worsened and reached the stage of divorce, considering that the more homogeneous couple, the more settled their marital life.