“Personal Status” regulates foreign wife divorce disputes

Yousef Al-Sharif: “The UAE Personal Status Law shall be applied in any dispute, if one of its parties is a citizen.”

The legal advisor, Dr. Youssef Al-Sharif, warned individuals of the possibility of losing their rights in personal status disputes, due to some ignorance of the law, and consulting non-specialists, reviewing in a video episode broadcast by "Emirates Today", through its platforms on social networking sites, the story of a dispute over child custody between a citizen And an American wife.

He stated that "a citizen married an American woman in 2011, and bore her two sons and a daughter (9, 7.5, and 4 years), and the wife obtained Emirati citizenship by extension."

He added that the husband divorced her three or four months ago, and she completed her waiting period, and he wants to obtain custody of his children from her, as she is not a Muslim.

For her part, his wife responded by saying that she worked at this moment, and early relinquished the state’s citizenship, to rely on the American Personal Status Law in any dispute over custody, as she is not a citizen, and to ensure that she will keep her children, travel with them to her country, and grant them her citizenship.

Al-Sharif explained that the legislator decided to apply the personal status law of the UAE, in any dispute, if one of the parties to the case is a citizen, which means that the husband has the right to adhere to the law of the state, and demand custody of the children, because their religion differs from their mother’s religion.

He pointed out that the law with regard to the custody of children stipulates in Article 145 that if the custodian is a mother and she is not in the custody of the child, her custody is forfeited, unless the judge decides otherwise in the interest of the child, provided that the period of custody does not exceed five years for his completion, a male who was female mother.

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